Conference Agenda

The integration of Virtual Reality (VR) into teacher education provides significant opportunities to enhance educational practices, potentially bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. Such a bridge is critical for preparing future teachers to handle classroom dynamics more effectively (Yilmaz & Coşkun, 2023).

While VR, even with today’s technologies, cannot match the complexity and multi-faceted reality of an actual classroom, numerous studies have highlighted the effective role of immersive VR environments in promoting key skills among student teachers, including classroom management, empathy, and reflective practices. Huang et al. (2022) found that VR environments fostered greater interest and self-efficacy in classroom management compared to conventional video-based training methods, indicating that VR can provide authentic training experiences. Furthermore, the emotional engagement fostered through VR training contributes to developing critical professional competencies. Studies suggest that providing students with the ability to practice in simulated environments helps enhance their empathy and reflective skills, which are essential components of effective teaching (Stavroulia & Lanitis, 2019).

Despite the promising outcomes associated with VR training, effective implementation is contingent upon adequate infrastructure and comprehensive training of teacher educators (Yilmaz & Coşkun, 2023). Moreover, some studies suggest that current simulations often lack the necessary complexity, which could undermine their effectiveness as pedagogical tools. Huang et al. (2021) indicate that extended, immersive experiences that gradually scale in complexity would better prepare teachers for real-world teaching challenges. As complexity increases, it becomes crucial to consider that VR-assisted training is only effective if embedded in proper preparation and debriefing (Petersen et al., 2023). For the latter, we argue analytical insights drawn from VR environments can enhance knowledge transfer processes via enhanced, data-driven reflection.

Addressing these challenges, the SILVA project – funded by a Movetia grant – implements a novel way of using VR to educate future teachers. It builds on a Swiss-South African partnership (project LAVIR) that focuses on micro-teaching practices in science education (i.e., on short teaching and learning segments), and blends in Learning Analytics as a reflective tool. SILVA demonstrates how VR training tools can be transferred across institutions and contexts: adapting LAVIR from South African to Swiss settings, with localization for Italian and German instruction and Swiss middle school pedagogy.

With SILVA, pre-service teachers can safely practice their teaching with their peers and improve their lesson reflection using a Learning Analytics dashboard based on data collected during the VR-delivered lesson. This contribution will showcase the SILVA VR environment and present data collected in South Africa and Switzerland to validate its impact in teacher education.

Virtual reality (VR) is becoming an important extension of Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector, especially for collaborative model review and coordination. These reviews are typically carried out in interprofessional teams (e.g., across design, engineering, and construction roles), where disciplinary perspectives must be aligned to detect and resolve clashes. In this context, platforms such as Autodesk Workshop XR allow interprofessional teams to enter shared BIM models as avatars and conduct real-time design and clash reviews.
A recent meta-analysis shows that immersive VR (IVR) typically increases spatial presence and engagement and yields modest learning advantages over desktop/non-immersive VR (DVR); importantly, these modality effects vary with task complexity and interface usability (Coban et al., 2022). At the same time, stronger presence and engagement do not necessarily lead to better teamwork. Recent theory and reviews of immersive collaborative learning emphasize that collaborative outcomes in IVR depend on how teams coordinate attention, negotiate meaning, and adapt strategies when facing impasses (e.g., Paulsen et al., 2024).
Because successful adaptation in complex team tasks relies on shared monitoring and solution-testing, co-regulation, defined as team members’ mutual, moment-to-moment management of goals, strategies, motivation, and emotions, may be a key mechanism in VR-based BIM collaboration and a pathway through which VR modality influences team performance.
Building on this reasoning, IVR’s affordances may shape how co-regulation unfolds during BIM problem solving. Because IVR amplifies social and physical presence when compared to DVR, it may elicit more frequent and higher-quality co-regulation, which should in turn translate into faster and more accurate clash resolutions (Paulsen et al., 2024).

Accordingly, the study addresses three questions: (1) whether co-regulation differs between interprofessional apprentice teams working in DVR versus IVR; (2) whether co-regulation predicts clash‐resolution performance when DVR versus IVR is controlled; and (3) how VR modality and co-regulation jointly relate to performance.

To investigate these questions, we involved forty apprentices (N = 40) from two professions (building technology apprentices and draftsmen) and divided them into 10 interprofessional teams of four, with balanced profession representation. Teams were randomly assigned to either IVR or DVR in a between-groups design. All teams used the same BIM house model in Autodesk Workshop XR to resolve twenty predefined clashes while collaborating either as avatars (in IVR) or without embodiment (in DVR).

Data related to demographics and VR/BIM experience (own scale), motivation (Situational Motivation Scale SIMS, Guay et. al., 2000), presence (Heck et.al., 2021) and co-regulation (Co-Regulated Learning Questionnaire CRLQ, Olakanmi, 2016), were collected via questionnaires pre- and post-treatment (Pre-treatment: demographics, VR/BIM experience and motivation; post-treatment: motivation, presence, co-regulation).

Resolution Performance was also measured by: (a) number of detected clashes, (b) time to resolve each clash, (c) quality of the resolution, and (d) completeness of the resolution. Two experts pre-assessed every clash and defined at least four possible resolutions to enable standardized scoring.

Results are not available yet, as data collection is running now (and will be completed by mid-December 2025), but they will certainly be presented at the conference.

By integrating the above-reported measures with detailed performance scoring, the study responds to a key gap in the field: existing BIM VR-modality studies have mainly focused on usability and performance outcomes, while the process-level of co-regulation that may underpin effective clash resolution has received little attention. Understanding team regulation helps to improve VR reviews not only in terms of speed, but also in terms of decision quality and practical feasibility.

Abstract
Im Projekt Scafalle werden digitale Scaffolds entwickelt, um Schüler:innen und Lehrpersonen im offenen, projektbasierten Unterricht, etwa im forschenden Lernen oder Making, gezielt zu unterstützen. Ziel ist es, Lernende bei Herausforderungen zu fördern, die sie noch nicht eigenständig bewältigen können (vgl. Belland, 2017; Simons & Klein, 2007), und Lehrpersonen bei der Organisation und didaktischen Steuerung solcher Lernprozesse zu entlasten.
Der Beitrag stellt zentrale konzeptionelle Überlegungen und die technische Umsetzung ausgewählter Scaffolds vor, darunter adaptive Aufgabenstrukturen, gestufte Hilfekarten (Arnold et al., 2017; vgl. Schilling et al., 2023), Text-to-Speech-/Speech-to-Text-Funktionen sowie ein digitales Whiteboard zur Reflexion. Diese Module werden als Webanwendung mit barrierearmen, multimodalen Interaktionsmöglichkeiten realisiert.
Die Entwicklung der digitalen Scaffolds erfolgt im Sinne des design-based research-Ansatzes in Zusammenarbeit mit Lehrpersonen. Transkripte der aus den gemeinsamen Workshops wurden mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse (Rädiker & Kuckartz, 2020) von Transkripten analysiert. In einem ersten Co-Design-Workshop mit Lehrpersonen und Fachpersonen aus der Lehrer*innenbildung, wurden im Rahmen von Needfinding und Prototyping zentrale Herausforderungen sowie erste Lösungsansätze im Kontext von Making und forschendem Lernen identifiziert. Auf dieser Grundlage wurden erste Anforderungen an digitale Scaffolds abgeleitet. In zwei nachfolgenden Co-Design-Workshops wurden diese Anforderungen systematisch weiterentwickelt und priorisiert.
Aktuell befindet sich das Projekt in der Phase der technischen Implementierung, die in enger Zusammenarbeit mit der Fachhochschule für Informatik Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) erfolgt. Die digitalen Scaffolds werden in mehreren Design-Sprints umgesetzt und sollen ab Frühjahr 2026 in der Schulpraxis prototypisch erprobt werden. In einer nachfolgenden Phase wird die schulische Erprobung durch qualitative Rückmeldungen von Lehrpersonen begleitet und ausgewertet (vgl. Mejeh & Sarbach, 2024).
Der Beitrag liefert praxisnahe Einblicke in die Entwicklung digitaler Scaffolds im Rahmen eines designbasierten Forschungsprozesses. Vorgestellt werden ausgewählte Software-Komponenten sowie ihre geplante Erprobung im schulischen Unterrichtskontext. Die Evaluation in der nächsten Projektphase erfolgt durch qualitative Rückmeldungen von Lehrpersonen und fokussiert auf zentrale Dimensionen wie die Benutzerfreundlichkeit, die pädagogische Eignung, die Anwendbarkeit im Unterricht sowie die Wirkung auf die Selbstständigkeit der Lernenden. Auf dieser Grundlage sollen sowohl gelungene Ansätze als auch bestehende Herausforderungen sichtbar gemacht und für die Weiterentwicklung der digitalen Scaffolds genutzt werden. Der Beitrag diskutiert die geplante Rückkopplung entlang didaktischer und technischer Gestaltungsprinzipien und reflektiert die längerfristige Etablierung der entwickelten Scaffolds im Schulunterricht.