Topics:
Simulation practice, individualized simulation, individualized reflection, deep reflection, reflective process, developmental support, realistic simulation, simulated experience, engaging simulation, developing judgement, AI coaching, Artificial Intelligence coaching, online learning, educator prep, educator preparation program, structured learning, professional judgement, scalable learning
By Ken Spero
Online and hybrid programs have solved an important access problem.
Candidates can participate from different locations, continue working, and complete their preparation around professional and family responsibilities. This flexibility is particularly important for working educators, career changers, and aspiring leaders who cannot easily attend a traditional, campus-based program.
But access to content is not the same as access to practice, individualized reflection, or developmental support.
Asynchronous programs can provide readings, recorded instruction, assignments, and discussion boards at scale. What is harder to provide is the opportunity for every participant to step into a realistic professional situation, make consequential decisions, and then receive an individualized conversation about the thinking behind those decisions.
The business opportunity is to preserve the flexibility of online learning while adding more of the experience and reflection that professional preparation requires.
Teachers and school leaders ultimately perform through judgment. They must interpret incomplete information, weigh competing priorities, anticipate reactions, and decide what to do when several defensible options are available. These capabilities cannot be developed through information alone.
A simulation places the participant inside a realistic problem of practice. Concepts that may have appeared abstract in a reading or lecture become part of a situation involving people, pressure, uncertainty, and consequences.
Participants must decide what they would actually do – not simply explain what someone should do.
That makes simulation more than an engaging online activity. It becomes an applied bridge between coursework and clinical or professional practice.
A teacher candidate can practice responding to an angry parent, addressing a student’s needs, or navigating a difficult interaction with a colleague. An aspiring school leader can confront staff conflict, community pressure, resource constraints, or a policy that does not fit the realities of the school.
These experiences help participants see the relevance of what they are learning and begin developing the judgment to apply it.
The value of a simulation grows when participants examine why they made their decisions, what they prioritized, which assumptions influenced their thinking, and what they might do differently.
That reflection can occur through faculty facilitation, peer discussion, mentoring, or individual coaching. However, it is difficult to provide consistently in large, hybrid, or asynchronous programs.
Faculty members cannot conduct a separate coaching conversation after every simulation with every student. Adjunct instructors may bring valuable field experience but have limited time outside scheduled course responsibilities. Students may also complete their work at different times, making immediate faculty response impractical.
As a result, the simulation may provide a powerful experience without every participant receiving an equally meaningful opportunity to learn from it.
AI Coaching offers a possible individualized layer. Because the Coach can know the problem of practice, the participant’s decisions, the consequences experienced, and any qualitative responses submitted during the simulation, it begins with shared context. The student does not have to reconstruct the entire experience before reflection can begin.
The conversation can move directly toward questions such as:
Assigning a simulation creates access to an experience. It does not guarantee that the experience becomes learning.
A student can complete the decisions, see the consequences, and move on without fully examining the reasoning involved. Even when reflection questions are provided, participants may respond at a surface level unless something helps them reconsider, clarify, or extend their thinking.
The simulation creates the experience. Reflection helps convert that experience into learning.
AI Coaching can help protect the value of the simulation by making that reflective step available even when faculty time, class schedules, or program structures make individualized debriefing difficult.
This may be especially important in asynchronous programs. The conversation can occur while the situation, decisions, and emotional reactions remain fresh rather than waiting for the next class meeting or faculty appointment.
The AI Coach should not replace faculty-led debriefing or cohort discussion. Those experiences add human judgment, professional expertise, and perspectives that technology cannot reproduce. The potential value is that individualized reflection no longer has to disappear when those resources are unavailable.
Educator-preparation programs often rely on multiple faculty members, clinical supervisors, and adjunct instructors. That diversity brings valuable experience to a program, but it can also create variation in how students are supported.
One instructor may conduct a deep simulation debrief. Another may have time for only a brief discussion. Adjuncts may have considerable practical expertise but limited availability between classes. In asynchronous sections, student reflection may depend largely on written assignments.
An AI Coach grounded in the same simulation and aligned with the program’s learning objectives could provide a more consistent starting point across instructors and sections.
That does not standardize the entire learning experience. Faculty members can still bring their own expertise, challenge the participant’s conclusions, and connect the simulation to course content and field experience. The consistency lies in ensuring that every participant has at least one structured opportunity to examine the experience.
The business case is not that AI can do the work of faculty more cheaply.
Faculty understand the curriculum, the profession, and the participant’s broader development. They can connect one experience to patterns observed across a semester, challenge reasoning with professional judgment, and determine when a student needs greater support.
AI Coaching may allow faculty to use that limited time differently.
With the participant’s knowledge and appropriate permissions, the reflective process could produce material that the student brings to a faculty member, adjunct, clinical supervisor, or mentor:
The faculty conversation does not have to begin with, “What happened in the simulation?” It can begin with, “What does this tell us about your developing practice, and what should you work on next?”
Simulations provide common practice. AI supports immediate reflection. Faculty bring expertise, context, challenge, and human judgment.
For colleges and universities, the strongest case may not be a direct reduction in coaching expenditures. It is the possibility of providing a more applied, individualized, and consistent student experience without requiring faculty time to grow in direct proportion to enrollment.
Potential value includes:
There may also be longer-term value in recruitment, persistence, student satisfaction, and perceptions of program quality. Those are reasonable possibilities, but they should not be presented as established outcomes.
Research on asynchronous learning supports the importance of teaching presence, cognitive presence, interaction, and timely feedback. It does not yet establish that SchoolSims AI Coaching will improve enrollment, retention, or completion. Those outcomes should be tested through carefully designed pilots.
The immediate questions are more direct:
Online educator preparation should not have to choose between flexibility and meaningful practice.
Coachable Moments by Design could allow hybrid and asynchronous programs to provide both: scalable access to realistic professional experiences and an individualized opportunity to learn from them.
The AI Coach is not valuable merely because it is available around the clock. Its potential comes from being grounded in a specific experience and informed by what the participant actually decided. That gives the conversation a meaningful place to begin.
The business case is therefore not simply lower cost. It is the possibility of increasing the developmental value students receive from the program while using limited faculty time where it matters most.
For the complete research base, financial framework, implementation cautions, and recommended pilot measures, see the companion paper, “The Business Case for Coachable Moments by Design.”
Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654318759268
Martin, F., Wang, C., Jokiaho, A., May, B., & Grübmeyer, S. (2023). Teaching presence in asynchronous online classes. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.
Moore, R. L. (2022). Fostering cognitive presence in online courses: A systematic review. Online Learning, 26(1).
Parker, A., Rudder, L., & Zenkov, K. (2026, July 28). 4 effective strategies for teacher mentors. ISTE+ASCD Blog. https://www.ascd.org/blogs/4-effective-strategies-for-teacher-mentors
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SchoolSims provides dynamic, simulation-based professional development for educators and school leaders in public, private, and independent schools, as well as for future educators in colleges and universities. Our simulations present real-world leadership challenges through interactive, decision-based scenarios, leveraging AI-driven insights and live-action elements. By engaging in these experiences, learners refine their decision-making skills, bridge the gap between theory and practice, and enhance their ability to lead in complex educational environments.