Great question! There are a few ways to ‘use’ the tools.
First, once you gain access to the tool from SIMmersion then you will get a username and password for each trainee. The trainees go to the SIMmersion website and log in.
From there, they can double click the intervention icon.
Then the trainee (or teacher) just needs to move the mouse around and click on what they want to use. The ‘virtual’ in our tools are reflecting the characters that you get to talk to. This type of virtual interview training does not require goggles or headsets.
Feedback is a key feature of the tools. There are 4 levels of feedback that trainees receive.
Trainees observe non-verbal cues to give them real-time feedback as they interact with the virtual characters.
Trainees get feedback on their specific statements via a transcript that is accessible during the interview (and afterwards).
Trainees receive individual numerical scores for each learning goal and a total score across all learning goals.
Trainees receive a detailed performance review for each learning goal. All feedback options are automated by the tools.
Each interview can take anywhere from about 10 minutes (on easier levels of difficulty) to 25 minutes (on hard levels of difficulty). For folks who read a little slower or take more time choosing their response, the interviews can take a little longer.
In general, the more interviews one completes, the greater improvement in their skills. That said, each trainee has their own level of skill before beginning the training. Thus, trainees with stronger skills at the start may need fewer sessions than those with fewer skills at the start. In our research we observed a ‘dose effect’ which means that the more interviews a trainee completes, the more likely they are to get a job. Click here to see our results regarding employment based on how many virtual interviews were completed.
Thanks for thinking about joining us! We have several ongoing studies and are always looking for future partners and groups to work with.
For community partners, your participation will include our team training your staff to implement the tools and allowing our team to evaluate your implementation of the tools. We also monitor employment outcomes for our participants. Some of our studies require ‘deeper’ participation where we come to your site and conduct assessments and interviews with your students or clients, whereas some of our studies have ‘lighter’ participation where we do not come to your site and conduct assessments and rely more on administrative data to help us understand if the tools are helping your students and clients obtain employment.
Our current projects are evaluating the interview tools in community mental health agencies, prisons, schools, and we are looking to also work with juvenile justice settings and youth aging out of foster care.
Given the scalability of such a tool, we are looking to conduct research with State-Level partners (e.g., Illinois Department of Human Services; Michigan Rehabilitation Services; Michigan Department of Corrections) and we are working towards multi-state partnerships to evaluate the tools. So far Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida have successfully partnered with the Level Up Lab.
This is an important topic as it is critical information that administrators use to make their decision about whether or not to implement a practice. In general, we require ‘trainers’ to complete approximately 3.5 hours of training prior to their real-world implementation of the tool. This 3.5 hours is broken up into spending time attending an orientation session with our staff; using the tool themselves; and performing a series of two role-plays with a peer to practice teaching the tool to others (and serving as the student to someone else who is practicing to teach the tool).