Tepak programme enhances educators’ digital training skills

The Cyprus University of Technology (Tepak) is participating in a virtual reality-based training programme expected to reinforce educators’ digital skills and address the need for digital transformation of teacher education and training.

The VRTEACHER (virtual reality-based training to improve digital competences of teachers) project aims to provide effective education responses related to educators’ training via using a novel VR-based pedagogical approach for virtual practicum, the university said.

The project will address challenges related to class management in crisis situations, such as a pandemic, with the vision to equip teachers with key skills including empathy, perspective-taking, self-efficacy and adaptability, through immersive and experiential training experiences that reflect real-life scenarios and situations faced during a crisis.

The main target groups of the VRTEACHER project are pre-service student teachers (higher education students, PhD candidates, etc.), and in-service educators/teachers.

The main outputs of the VRTEACHER project will be a VR-based competence framework for teacher training and a state-of-the-art VR teacher training application that reflects real-life-based teacher training needs. The VR application will be integrated both in pre-service and in-service teacher training initiatives.

The project is coordinated by the Social Computing Research Center, through the Visual Media Computing Research Laboratory of the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus University of Technology. The Cypriot participation in the project also includes the Microsoft Computer Games and Emerging Technologies Research Lab of the CUT.

The kick-off meeting of the project took place last month. The VRTEACHER project is funded under Key Action 2 of the Erasmus+ programme and will last two years until May 31, 2023 with a total budget of €219,589.

More details about the project can be found here:

https://vmc.cut.ac.cy/vrteacher-home/

https://www.facebook.com/VRTEACHERproject