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2: Simple simulations of professional experiences – the Virtual Case Creator

Background Birmingham City University is a large Initial Teacher Training ITT provider in the West Midlands. The students that this case study relates to are final year undergraduates on a BA Primary Education with QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) course. Intended outcome(s) To improve the provision for increasing students understanding of key skills and attitudes in relation to multi-agency working including working with parents. The challenge (including established practice) It has become apparent that students are often „protected‟ from certain situations and experiences during their school experiences. This is often for very good reasons including child and data protection issues and the desire not to expose students to the most challenging issues. The focus of teaching practice is predominately on aspects of teaching and learning within the classroom. This obviously involves planning, preparation, delivery and assessment of lessons. However, much of the role of the teacher includes interacting with parents and other professionals – experiences students rarely have until after they qualify. The challenge here was to find a way to give students some of these experiences and the opportunity to make mistakes in a „safe‟ environment.

Established practice Previous practice included lectures and seminar discussions relating to key issues surrounding multi-agency working. Those few students who were able to draw on experiences from school practice or, as parents themselves, were encouraged to take lead roles in discussions. This, however, also drew attention to the inconsistent nature of the experiences available to the students through school experience visits. The e/blended-learning/ICT advantage The Virtual Case Creator (VCC) was originally developed by staff from the Faculty of Health, Birmingham City University (Formerly UCE Birmingham).

Name and role Graham Lowe Senior Lecturer in Primary Science Education and Learning Technology Champion Contact details graham.lowe@bcu.ac.uk Institution name Birmingham City University

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It aims to provide:

“deliberately unstructured, non-linear scenarios that aim to facilitate the safe development of a range of cognitive skills... Scenario cases are described primarily by illustrated representations of aspects of practice. These aim to encourage learners to develop and apply their observational skills and aim to ensure that learners adopt a learning approach that best prepares them for real world practice.” (Birmingham City University, 2008)

Each scenario consists of one or more „cases‟, a word that betrays the medical nature of the software as originally conceived. Each case is made up of a range of information sources presented in a variety of ways (text, .pdf documents, websites, animations, pictures, videos etc.). These sources must be processed by the student in way that prioritises important information and sets aside irrelevancies (which are deliberately included). They then take part in a problem solving activity using the information that they have deemed most useful.

“The information presented within each VCC case hasn‟t, therefore, been pre-digested or pre-prioritised by a teacher, as often occurs with more traditional approaches to case study presentation and on-line simulations, but provides the learner with the opportunity to decide, as they would in practice, how they would identify decisions most relevant, and discount potential decisions less relevant to the case in question.” (Birmingham City University, 2008)

Following discussions between staff in Health and Education, it was decided that two scenarios should be developed for use with an upcoming taught module that had, at its core, an aim to develop students‟ understanding of multi-agency working in light of the Every Child Matters Agenda (DfES, 2005). To support this aim the two scenarios presented two sides of a problem often faced by teachers – interaction with parents and interaction with other professionals. The scenarios would be set within a Year 2 class in a school with the student accessing the simulation taking on the role of the class teacher. Amateur actors were employed to take on various other roles and video footage was shot of a variety of situations/discussions. We were often able to cast „real‟ people in the roles of Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, School Nurse and Educational Psychologist. Still shots of the actors were then used by the graphic artists to represent the characters in drawn format on selection screens. In the first scenario (see screenshots fig.1 & fig.2) a child, Ashley, has recently arrived in a Year 2 class and the head teacher informs the class teacher that Ashley‟s mother has made an allegation of bullying. The head teacher wants the class teacher to provide some information about how Ashley is doing both educationally and socially. The student‟s job is to explore the graphic images, clicking on hot-spots to access information including comments from other children, records of achievement, samples of work, previous school reports etc. The student is then presented with forty-five possible statements that could go into a report to the head. Of the forty-five statements, fifteen were designed to be those that might be considered to be a true and useful reflection of the information as presented, whilst the remaining thirty are not justified by the information available. The student selects the fifteen statements they consider to be correct. They are then given a score out of fifteen. The student may return to the scenario at any point and modify their selection in the light of further investigation. In the second scenario (see screenshots fig.3 & fig.4) time has apparently moved on and the head teacher informs the student (still acting as class teacher) that he has called a meeting involving the mother, the special needs co-ordinator, the educational psychologist, the school nurse and the inclusion co-ordinator. The meeting is presented as a series of video clips. Each

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clip is selected by choosing a question and a respondent. For example: To Mother: When did you first notice Ashley‟s problems? The actors were filmed having been asked the questions and a variety of answers were forthcoming, ranging from a valuable insight to an angry or defensive outburst. In addition to the information gleaned from the video clips of actors‟ responses, hot-spots on items such as the image of the school nurse‟s diary allowed access to a range of documents including for example, the job description of the relevant professional, recent research, information on medical conditions etc. The students also had access to a series of videos representing „talking heads‟ descriptions of the main characters and Ashley‟s family, each from their own perspective. The scenario was completed by the student by deciding on which fifteen question/respondent combinations out of a possible 45 were the most suitable or appropriate at the meeting. Students work on these activities as part of a planned programme including lectures on key issues and seminar discussions on the implications.

The simulated experiences were made available to the students via the Internet to use as and when they liked. Regular sessions were then timetabled for the students to engage in discussion with each other. This was particularly useful as, for once, students had the same experiences to draw upon in discussions. It became clear both to students and staff that this reduced the amount of „description‟ in discussion sessions, where students often spent much of the time describing the context of the school experiences they were drawing on. Key points for effective practice Following the first usage of the VCC with the education students, they were surveyed on their experience. Positive benefits were identified by many, but not all, of the students. Case study interviews of both positively and negatively minded students were carried out. Briefly: Most students understood the need to address the issues and appreciated that experiences

in school were necessarily limited. Most students felt that the simulation was a good or very good way of teaching about the

issues. A significant minority felt that as a simulation, it could not be a valuable experience. A significant barrier for some students was a pre-disposed attitude of „only teacher practice

really matters‟. Engagement most often occurred at points where students felt emotionally engaged rather

than cognitively engaged. Disengagement most often occurred at points when students had a sense that they were

„playing the game‟ (for example, in trying to find all 15 „correct‟ answers).

Conclusions and recommendations The project has been valuable to the students in terms of deepening their understanding of the issues related to the module. It has been equally valuable to tutors as the lessons we have learned, particularly in relation to our understanding of barriers to engagement with simulations and the importance of trying to elicit an emotional response, are being directly fed into a new project using computer simulation that takes things forward into a 3D computer generated virtual school.

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References: Birmingham City University (2008) The Virtual Case Creator. Available at: http://vccweb.health.bcu.ac.uk/vcc_introduction.asp

DfES (2005) Every Child Matters: Change for Children. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20101012083544/http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/_download/?id=2675 Screenshots:

Fig.1 This image represents the classroom from the child’s point of view. Clicking on different children brings up comments about Ashley. Clicking on the teacher’s laptop brings up a range of documentation. Documentation, such as the school’s Ofsted report and policy documents can be accessed in .pdf format.

Fig.2 Ashley’s file contains records of achievement as would be expected of a child his age. Clicking on his work tray brings up samples of work in English, maths and science. It also contains personal items such as football cards and sweets. On the wall is a behaviour chart which can be examined.

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Fig.3 This is a representation of a meeting with key professionals. The student teacher accessing the scenario is assumed to be present at the near end of the table. By clicking on a person ‘hot-spot’ – in this case the mother – a video of that person introducing themselves plays. A drop-down menu contains a list of 45 questions to ask to individuals. Clicking on a question causes a video to play of that person answering. The computer records the question/person combination chosen. The user must select 15 combinations to complete the task. Additional information relating to each role can be accessed via hotspots on, for example, the mother’s notebook and the Educational Psychologist’s electronic device.

Fig.4 This image represents the family home of the child in the scenario. Clicking on various ‘hot-spots’ causes additional information, introductory videos and ‘clues’ to appear. This gives the user an insight into the home circumstances of Ashley.