FiSK

Besides teaching theoretical knowledge, university teacher education also comprises practice-oriented phases that enable pre-service teachers to apply the knowledge they have gained in their academic career. However, it is evident that a stronger practical orientation during university education would be preferable. Here, the use of simulated learning environments could provide the opportunity to embed knowledge in a concrete situation and thus enable the action-oriented application of knowledge. In order to simulate interactions between (future) biology teachers and their students, the Simulated Classroom (SCR^Bio) was developed. Within this digital learning environment, pre-service teachers can pose questions to virtual students, who respond based on their preset of individual ability profiles. The assessments of the virtual student answers by the pre-service teachers provide insights into their procedural content, pedagogical content, and pedagogical knowledge. The existing SCR^Bio enables the measurement of the procedural professional knowledge of pre-service teachers but neglects to specifically support elements during the process. Here, the project “FiSK - Effects of Adaptive Feedback Bots in the Simulated Classroom on Procedural Professional Knowledge” aims to close the gap by extending the SCR^Bio with an AI-based bot system that responds either directly to requests from pre-service teachers or automatically, based on defined algorithms in the SCR^Bio. These feedback bots will provide adaptive feedback on the pre-service teachers’ performance within the SCR^Bio and thus support their activities in the simulated learning environment.

The aims of the FiSK project are (1) to develop a feedback bot using AI-based approaches and theoretical competence models, (2) to implement these feedback bots in the SCR^Bio in order to provide pre-service teachers with adaptive feedback to promote procedural professional knowledge, (3) to identify the learning-promoting effects of the feedback bot in the SCR^Bio, (4) to extend the SCR^Bio to other topics (e.g., experimentation, argumentation), and, finally, (5) to integrate the developed support system, combining the simulated classroom environment and the feedback bot, into university education.

FiSK is a collaborative project of the IPN, Furtwangen University, and AI Coaching. The collaborative research project is headed by Prof. Ute Harms (IPN). It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the funding program “Digital Higher Education - Innovations in Higher Education through Artificial Intelligence and Big Data”.

Publikationen

Fischer, J., Machts, N., Bruckermann, T., Möller, J., & Harms, U. (2022, online first). The Simulated Classroom Biology (SCRBio) - a Simulated Classroom Environment for Assessing the Action-Oriented Professional Knowledge of Pre-Service Teachers about Evolution. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12718

Fischer, J., Jansen, T., Möller, J., & Harms, U. (2021). Measuring biology trainee teachers’ professional knowledge about evolution—introducing the Student Inventory. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 14(1), Article ar4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-021-00144-0

Fischer, J., Machts, N., Möller, J., & Harms, U. (2021). Der Simulierte Klassenraum Biologie – Erfassung deklarativen und prozeduralen Wissens bei Lehramtsstudierenden der Biologie. Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Naturwissenschaften, 27, 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40573-021-00136-z