Abstract:

Teacher quality is known to be very important for student outcomes in education. There are even arguments that it is the most important school variable affecting student achievement in schools. Therefore, one of the most direct and effective ways to improve the quality of education is to change teacher education in a way that improves teacher skills (OECD, 2005; Musset, 2009).

In the learning process, teachers need to respond effectively to the ever-changing needs of students and the classroom environment. Considering that teachers do not always have the freedom to leave the classroom environment in uncomfortable situations, it is thought that teachers who can remain cognitively flexible and prevent automatic and learned impulsive reactions will feel more positive emotionally, and their well-being will increase (Patrawala, 2018). Çağlar-Özhan (2023) examined the interaction of executive functioning skills and discrete emotions of pre-service teachers in a computer simulation environment and found that pre-service teachers' performances in simulation tasks while experiencing negative and positive emotions and their executive functioning skills performances differed according to their emotional state.

It is thought that the findings to be obtained from the evaluation of the emotions experienced by teachers in the teaching environment in the context of executive function skills will provide clues about the necessary content arrangement for teacher education. Improving the usability of such environments offered in teacher education will also contribute to the teaching performance and emotional competence expected from pre-service teachers. In this study, a virtual classroom application was developed in which the teacher can intervene in student behaviors in the classroom and present learning tasks with a 3D simulation application prepared for pre-service teachers. Within the scope of this study, a usability study of this simulation-based learning task application was conducted.

Usability studies can be said to focus on developing interactive technologies and products that are effective, efficient, and satisfying from the users' point of view in order to increase the usability of an interface, technology, or device. In this context, studies were conducted to examine the usability of simulation-based teaching tasks in the classroom simulator, identify usability problems, if any, eliminate them, and improve the interface.

It is thought that this study can contribute to the literature on how effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction are evaluated in a simulation-based task and how such environments can be improved in terms of usability. In future applications, it is aimed at optimizing the system by taking measures to address the usability problems identified. In future studies, principles can be developed to improve 3D simulation environments in terms of usability, and the effects of these principles can be examined.

Keywords:

Simulation environments, 3d, eye tracking, usability, teacher training.