Image credit: middle school classroom from Mursion
Mursion, Inc. develops
competency-based simulations addressing the set of skills that a teacher
candidate must master before entering the classroom.
Utilizing a unique blend of artificial
intelligence and live human performance to deliver powerful and personalized learning
simulations, Mursion’s technology is
being used by more than 65 universities to prepare preservice K-12 teachers for
the challenges of teaching in today’s classrooms (please find also An Online Formative Assessment Math Serious Game For Preservice Teachers).
The teacher-training program provides a virtual
classroom, complete with middle school-age archetypes who demonstrate a wide
range of personalities, learning styles and educational needs. As the real-life
student teacher leads the class, the children respond accordingly, and the
scene progresses. Once players access the space and stand in front of the room
as the teacher, they can test different approaches in a much more varied way
than they could in the real world. This ensures prospective teachers can practice
a range of classroom competencies in a safe environment, and can do it multiple
times until they’ve developed mastery in that skill. Examples of instructional contexts
that can be played in Mursion's simulation include: Classroom Management, Family Engagement, Eliciting Student
Thinking and Leading Classroom Discussion, among others.
ETS Piloting A Revolutionary Change In Teacher Licensure
Educational Testing Service (ETS) is currently
designing and piloting the National Observational Teaching Exam (NOTE), a state-of-the-art
assessment for licensure that evaluates a prospective teacher’s ability to
translate knowledge of content and teaching into practice in the classroom using
Mursion’s platform.
This new kind of performance assessment is delivered
in a testing center using an interactive workstation and is designed so that
each candidate is placed "inside" a simulated classroom with
classroom-teaching tools and given the opportunity to engage in multiple high-leverage practices through several performances.
The NOTE assessment is based on 3 high-leverage
practices (HLPs): 1) Leading a group discussion; 2) Explaining and modeling
content, practices and strategies; and 3) Eliciting and interpreting individual
student’s thinking.
About Mursion, Inc.
Mursion, Inc. develops Mursion, the virtual reality environment where professionals
practice and master the complex interpersonal skills necessary to be effective
in high-stress professions.
Adopted by a wide range of innovative
organizations in healthcare, education, hospitality, finance, and other
corporate sectors, Mursion delivers
customized simulations that recreate the most demanding interpersonal
challenges that professionals confront on the job every day. Using a
combination of artificial intelligence and live actors, Mursion provides an interactive workspace that forces learners to
take risks from which they could learn how to improve their day-to-day
performance.
Mursion has recently redesigned
the engine on which the platform operates. Key changes include new
photo-realistic characters that mimic the physical poses and motions of young
children, and an interactive workspace where players and characters collaborate
with peripheral materials. The workspace represents a major advancement of Mursion's platform for the educational market because it enables
teachers in training to interact with student-avatars in the context of a
performance task.
These advancements were developed in conjunction
with the work that Mursion is doing
with TeachingWorks and Educational Testing Service (ETS) on the National Observational Teacher Exam (NOTE), aiming to place prospective teachers in realistic
teaching situations and to provide classroom challenges that teachers find
true to life.
Mursion, Inc. was
incorporated in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Mursion
CEO, Mark Atkinson, is a pioneer of new technologies to support teaching and
learning, and an Emmy-award winning documentary television producer.