A Whole New World Since COVID-19: Integrating Mursion Virtual Reality Simulation in Teacher Preparation and Practice
Abstract: The plethora of and accessibility to technologies have opened a whole new world of technology applications including Virtual Reality (VR), teacher education. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher educators monitored and adjusted the teaching and learning landscape with the use of technology applications. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore how Mursion VR simulation was integrated into the teacher preparation program. During the start of the spring 2022 semester, teacher candidates were introduced to the Mursion VR simulation. Each teacher candidate completed an open-ended question regarding their experience with Mursion VR simulation using Google Docs. Media Naturalness Theory (MNT) was used to ground this case study. Results indicate that Mursion VR simulations helped teacher candidates learn important classroom management techniques and bridged the field experience gap.