EducaSim: Interactive Simulacra for CS1 Instructional Practice

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mohne, Cameron, Vo, Nicholas, Demszky, Dora, Piech, Chris
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Mohne, Cameron
Vo, Nicholas
Demszky, Dora
Piech, Chris
author_facet Mohne, Cameron
Vo, Nicholas
Demszky, Dora
Piech, Chris
contents Role play is a high-impact mode of training that has demonstrated its effectiveness in improving learning outcomes. However, it is difficult to scale to teacher instruction due to its inherent dependency on providing personnel who are both trained and available to facilitate this learning environment. This poses a challenge, especially to massive online courses which may employ and aid hundreds to thousands of novice teachers. In this work, we present EducaSim: a novel framework that uses generative agents to simulate a small-group section for teachers-in-training to practice instruction. EducaSim works by implementing diverse pedagogical-based personas, actual course material, and agent-based architectures constructed for instructional practice to provide a pedagogically rich environment for teachers-in-training to engage in role play learning -- without the costly overhead that comes with it. We share our experiences with constructing and making the tool available for experimental training and preparation in a six-week CS1 course supporting 20,000 students. We found that teachers who engaged generally saw it as a positive experience. We believe that EducaSim is an important step to providing experiential teaching practice at scale for closely-defined settings and has great potential for future applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_11444
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EducaSim: Interactive Simulacra for CS1 Instructional Practice
Mohne, Cameron
Vo, Nicholas
Demszky, Dora
Piech, Chris
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Multiagent Systems
K.3.1; I.2.11; I.6.3
Role play is a high-impact mode of training that has demonstrated its effectiveness in improving learning outcomes. However, it is difficult to scale to teacher instruction due to its inherent dependency on providing personnel who are both trained and available to facilitate this learning environment. This poses a challenge, especially to massive online courses which may employ and aid hundreds to thousands of novice teachers. In this work, we present EducaSim: a novel framework that uses generative agents to simulate a small-group section for teachers-in-training to practice instruction. EducaSim works by implementing diverse pedagogical-based personas, actual course material, and agent-based architectures constructed for instructional practice to provide a pedagogically rich environment for teachers-in-training to engage in role play learning -- without the costly overhead that comes with it. We share our experiences with constructing and making the tool available for experimental training and preparation in a six-week CS1 course supporting 20,000 students. We found that teachers who engaged generally saw it as a positive experience. We believe that EducaSim is an important step to providing experiential teaching practice at scale for closely-defined settings and has great potential for future applications.
title EducaSim: Interactive Simulacra for CS1 Instructional Practice
topic Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Multiagent Systems
K.3.1; I.2.11; I.6.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11444