Teacher Candidates' Perceptions of Mixed Reality Simulations: Data and Analysis Filess

The data presented here includes 192 teacher candidates' responses to an online post-simulation survey. Each participant completed the survey immediately following the conclusion of a simulation session. The survey consisted of eight Likert questions that asked about candidates’ perceptions of the simulator, including their preparation, willingness to do it again or recommend it to a friend, and its relevance and utility. For each question, participants rated their response on a scale of one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree). Similar surveys have been used in prior research on candidates’ experiences of simulations (e.g., Bondie et al., 2023; Larson et al., 2020). We examined the scale’s validity for use for our sample and purpose of understanding experiences during simulated practice. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models (Brown, 2015) were fitted using the questions on the survey (see Appendix Table C1 for additional details on the CFA models). Given the poor model fit and measurement invariance over tasks and years, we do not present a composite experience score. Instead, we completed the subsequent analyses on item-level responses. <br><br>To understand participants’ perceptions of simulations across the full sample, we began by analyzing descriptive statistics for each item. Next, to tease out the influence of simulation features on candidates’ perceptions, we use a candidate random effects estimator to compare survey responses across different simulation conditions. The estimation strategy leverages variation in the features of simulation sessions within candidates and across cohorts to estimate the influence of task, support, and mode of delivery on candidates’ survey responses.