Dr. Kathleen Phillips

Special Education, Rehabilitation and Counseling, College of Education
Period of residence with xREAL
AY 2020-21

Project title

Project overview and pedagogical challenges

My project focuses on enabling teacher candidates to develop an effective classroom environment, which includes addressing environment components that would reduce behavior issues, increase teaching impact, and provide a fully-immersed experience into organizing the classroom.

Teacher candidates in Special Education need to experience a variety of classroom environment setups in order to determine the best way to teach for children with disabilities. Teacher candidates need to be able to see the classrom from the perspective of each child in order to understand and appreciate how the configuration of the environment supports or, conversely, inhabits learning. However, regulatory restrictions on classroom access (e.g., fingerprinting) and school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made real-life classroom observation more difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

Additionally, teacher candidates stand to benefit from supplemental instruction prior to “live” classroom access so that they are prepared to observe and reflect on salient experiences and environmental configurations.

Technology used, project design parameters, and implementation

I used Mozilla Hubs to create realistic and immersive classroom scenarios. Teacher candidates were able to access several versions of 3D classroom arrangements, walk around and assume different points of view, rearrange the classroom configuration, and reflect on the connection between learning and space architecture.

Mozilla Hubs is a multi-user virtual space platform that can be experienced in a variety of modalities: on the web, on a mobile device, or, for a totally immersive experience, using a virtual reality or mixed reality device such as the Oculus Quest 2. Because this platform uses WebVR standards to deliver content, students can access the platform using whatever device they have available, including a desktop. When on the platform, users can join virtual “rooms” featuring a variety of multimedia content and they can interact with other users and with virtual objects.

In this learning experience, teacher candidates are provided with a virtual 3D classroom, a selection of classroom furniture (e.g., tables, desks, dividers) they can interact with, and documents and other media (e.g., class rules, posters, student work samples) they can use in their virtual classroom. Teacher candidates are able to enter the virtual room, manipulate furniture placement, post documents, organize the classroom environment, and provide rationales for their setup. They can also experience the virtual room from any vantage point, allowing them to navigate among multiple student perspectives. Classmates and instructors can also “enter” the virtual classroom to experience its setup and provide feedback to teacher candidates.

Need to include details about the implementation

Lessons learned

Faculty testimonial & project demo:

• Kathleen’s talk for Tech Talks