3D IVT Interactive virtual Training
​for
​Early Career Teachers
The Interactive Virtual Training (IVT) is  multi-institution interdisciplinary research project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), a part of the U.S.  Department of Education (see below for team information). 

Our research goals are to design, program, and evaluate the effectiveness of early career teachers’  interactions with a 3D virtual classroom occupied by 3D interactive virtual students simulating disruptive children,  as a training practice opportunity for novice teachers on how to manage a disrupted classroom before the novice start teaching.   The traning is tailored to simulate classroom from poor neighborhoods, one helps to learn by interacting with 1st-2nd grade virtual students, and another helps with  6th-7th grade students.

Technical challenges are to design and implement a 3D virtual environment in which:
  • 30 semi-realistic diverse 3D children avatars,
  • situated in two 3D  virtual classrooms (1st and 6th grade),
  • disrupt peer students by misbehaving (e.g. off task, aggressive),
  • acting out realistic facial expressions and gestures,
  • according to vignettes providing realistic  scenarios of  students’ behavior sequences;
and in which:
  • novice teachers are asked to chose scenarios (e.g. give the student more time for the assigned task),
  • to learn from their mistake if their choice worsen the sequence of events, 
  • practice their skills  on low-end computers affordable for teachers, and
  • have an enjoyable and engaged experience all along, 
  • via a usable website accessible 24/7.
Psychological challenges are to:
  • enable inexperienced early career teachers in high poverty school to hone their behavior management skills,
  • provide teachers hands-on practice exercises on behavior management with disruptive virtual students,
  • facilitate a higher dose of active learning, and
  • accelerate the rate at which teachers develop their behavior management skills in the classroom.

Tour of the classroom

Below, you can tour the 3D classroom, empty or occupied with 1st grade students.  To move around the scene, use your keyboard Arrow Keys keys “W”, “A”, “S”, and “D”. The Arrow Keys rotate the camera, whereas the “W”, “A”, “S”, and “D” enable you to accelerate in different directions:
  • the “W” key to move forward,
  • the “A” key to go left,
  • the “S” key to go back, and
  • the “D” key to go right.
You can also control the camera angle displays to gauge (and record) best scene angles, either using the Arrow Keys or entering coordinates in the text boxes to control the camera angle directly (see 3x2 text boxes upper right screen corner when navigating the classroom in UnityWebPlayer)​​.
1st grade classroom customized with furniture, school supplies
Room with 1st grade students

​Meet the IVT  interdisciplinary research team

IVT is a multi-institution  interdisciplinary research project between a team of researchers in:​

Main Contacts

Computer science team

Dr. Christine Lisetti
Principal Investigator (Technical)
Associate Professor
​School of Computing and Information Sciences
​Director, Affective Social Computing Laboratory
Florida International University

Dr. Mihai Polceanu
Research Associate 
Affective Social Computing Laboratory
Florida International University

​Dr. Cedric Buche
Associate Professor
Lab-STICC / CNRS
Équipe IHSEV - Interaction Humain Système et Environnement Virtuel
CERV - Centre Européen de Réalité Virtuelle, FRANCE

Psychology and Education  team

Dr. Elisa Shernoff
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
Rutgers University

​Dr. Stacey Frazier​
Associate Professor 
Department of Psychology
Florida International University

Industrial and systems engineering team
Dr. Joe Gabbard
Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics
Associate Professor​​
Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Virginia Tech