Practice Teaching Sex Ed Before You Need to Do It for Real. MPC:VISTA 

What is MPC: VISTA and who is it for?

MPC: VISTA (Virtual Interactive Simulation Training Academy) is an online, practice-based professional development training for educators who teach Making Proud Choices!, a CDC-endorsed, evidence-based teen pregnancy and HIV/STI prevention program used by schools, community organizations, and public health agencies across the United States.

MPC: VISTA is specifically designed for educators who are new to MPC or who have never received formal training in how to teach it. It covers all eight MPC modules through a three-phase structure: interactive content (Learn It), expert modeling video (See It), and classroom simulation practice (Do It). The simulation phase is what makes it different from any other online professional development for sex education educators.

It is developed by dfusion, Inc., a health education technology company with more than 25 years of federally funded research in sexual health and HIV prevention. The training is currently being evaluated in an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial (Grant No. 5R44HD094406-03) and has been reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB No. IRB00014382).

Why simulation-based training for sex education educators works

Most online professional development for health educators follows the same passive format: click through slides, watch a video, take a quiz, get a certificate. That approach can transfer information. It does not build teaching skill.

Simulation-based training is different. It is the approach medicine uses for surgical residents, aviation uses for pilots, and the military uses for field preparation. You do not perform surgery for the first time on a real patient. You practice in a safe environment where you can make mistakes, get feedback, and try again.

MPC: VISTA applies that same logic to sex education professional development. The hardest part of teaching Making Proud Choices! is not knowing the content. It is knowing what to do when a student freezes during a role play, calls out something unexpected, or asks a question you were not prepared for. Those moments happen in every MPC classroom. And they are exactly where untrained educators struggle most.

In the Do It phase of each MPC: VISTA session, you practice in a virtual classroom where your decisions shape what happens next. You see the consequences of each choice, get immediate feedback, and can try different approaches. No real students. No stakes. Just practice.

Every simulation scenario was developed with direct input from MPC master trainers and MPC co-developer Dr. Loretta Sweet Jemmott, who serves as a key advisor on this project. Each situation in the training reflects what educators actually encounter, not hypothetical examples invented for the purpose.

The evidence behind simulation-based MPC educator training

Before building the full MPC: VISTA training, dfusion partnered with the RAND Corporation to run a small randomized controlled trial comparing simulation-based training to in-person MPC training. Participants trained through the simulation performed at least as well as in-person participants on observed fidelity and quality of instruction, and in some cases better on specific facilitation skills (Sontag-Padilla et al., 2023).

That result matters because most evaluations of online professional development measure self-reported confidence. This study measured what educators actually did when they got up to teach. Observed behavior, coded by trained raters, before and after training.

The current MPC: VISTA study is the full-scale test. Up to 165 educators, three arms, the same rigorous outcome measure. We are holding simulation-based professional development for sex education educators to the standard it deserves.

Who is eligible to participate in the MPC: VISTA research study

You may be eligible if you:

• Are an educator or health educator in training, including MPH students, pre-service health educators, or community health workers
• Work with, or plan to work with, adolescents
• Have not previously taught Making Proud Choices! or any other Jemmott curriculum (BPBR, MAD, PHAT, Sisters Saving Sisters, Power Through Choices)
• Have fewer than 3 years of experience teaching sex education
• Are 18 or older, English-speaking, and have access to a device with video capability and reliable internet

Everything in the study is remote and self-paced. Total time commitment is approximately 10 hours for participants who receive MPC: VISTA during the study. All participants receive a $300 e-gift card upon completing their study activities, regardless of which group they are assigned to. Participants assigned to the waitlist group also receive full access to MPC: VISTA at no cost when the study ends.

Participating in this study does more than benefit you. It generates the evidence that will make high-quality, simulation-based professional development for health educators accessible to educators everywhere, without the cost and logistics of in-person training.