ETeach3D: Designing a 3D virtual environment for evaluating the digital competence of preservice teachers

The acquisition of teacher digital competence is a key aspect in the initial training of teachers. However, most existing evaluation instruments do not provide sufficient evidence of this teaching competence. In this study, we describe the design and development process of a three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment for evaluating the teacher digital competence of future teachers, through a performance-based, collaborative and contextual evaluation. This environment, named ETeach3D, has been constructed using the educational design research approach. It is based on successive iterative cycles and is in accordance with the criteria of usefulness, validity, and effectiveness. In addition to the research team responsible for the project, participating in this study were 187 Spanish undergraduate students of Education and 22 experts in the field of educational technology. Results show that these environments, in addition to other characteristics, should (a) function smoothly and have simple interfaces, realistic scenes, and interactive activities and (b) follow a systematic evaluation procedure that integrates several strategies and levels of complexity. This research helps to improve the initial training of preservice teachers and contributes to the growing number of educational design research studies that focus in the field of evaluation of the curriculum domain. ; This research is funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain, SIMUL@B (ref: EDU2013-42223-P), and supported by the Secretary of Universities and Research, Department of Economy and Knowledge, Government of Catalonia. The project is coordinated by the ARGET research group (ref: 2014SGR1399).