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With VR, applicants can go on virtual reality campus tours to see what it would be like to attend a college or university in another city or even another country. And while there are plenty of active learning techniques to choose from, including simply asking students questions or arranging students for group work, more and more educators are seeing VR’s true potential. According to a recent survey of teachers and students, 90% of educators believe VR may help increase student learning.

VR for students with learning difficulties

ASD populations often have delayed or impaired speech and language abilities, affecting both production and perception, which adds to their communication barriers [157]. Compared to the substantial efforts focused on VR-based training of social functioning and emotion recognition, less attention has been paid to applying this technology to speech and language therapy. The majority of the existing research and practice focuses on teaching discrete language components, such as vocabulary, grammar, semantics, and pronunciation, with the pedagogical and interventional platforms still limited to non-immersive VEs, such as desktop VE and AR.

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The majority of them adopt the systematic review method for evidence synthesis and focus on a specific well-defined topic, including the effectiveness of VR intervention on a certain type of skill, such as attention detection, social functioning, or abstract concept and imagination. In contrast, narrative reviews on the use of VR in ASD research and practice account for only a tiny proportion. It is widely acknowledged that systematic reviews and narrative reviews provide complementary contributions [12,13]. They are both useful and indispensable in summarizing current knowledge and promoting further development in a newly emerging field. However, the fact that a substantial majority of existing review articles on VR and ASD adopt the systematic approach might indicate the existence of a spurious hierarchy of placing systematic reviews above narrative reviews on this topic, as has been pointed out in some research areas [12]. While the overwhelming emphasis on narrowly focused questions serves the purpose of solidifying positive evidence, its lack of broad perspectives may not be helpful in establishing a thorough and comprehensive understanding of using VR for ASD research and training.

VR for students with learning difficulties

Different from TD individuals who attend preferentially to social stimuli, such as people, faces, and body movements [96], individuals with ASD show an overall reduced social attention, which becomes more severe when the stimuli have a higher social content [97]. The inattention problem often hinders the process of research or therapy that participants with ASD take part in, leaving the work of researchers and clinicians floundering. In India, teachers have created an interactive textbook that uses 3D images, audio clips, and videos to describe the text. Other studies reveal how VR has been efficiently utilized to improve social stress, language deficiencies, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), motor or physical disability, dyslexia, cognitive deficits, and Down syndrome, among other disabilities.

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First-time wheelchair users, for example, could use VR to learn how to navigate a busy street or shopping center in a virtual environment, safely understanding how to move around and avoid obstacles in that virtual setting before venturing into the real world. Virtual reality could be used to help learners with communication challenges like autism or Asperger’s to develop and practice social skills in non-threatening environments, including offering access to learning opportunities from the safety and comfort of their own homes. Conversely, it could also be used to help people experience the world from the perspective of those learners. For students learning a foreign language, having access to AR/VR in education puts them in immersive scenarios to practice and explore. Order dinner in a French restaurant, complete a job interview in English, or tour a museum in Spanish.

The Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) cautions that learning disabilities “should not be confused with learning problems.” The latter can result from visual, hearing, or motor impairments, intellectual handicaps, emotional distress, or external disadvantages, such as poverty or malnutrition. The theory behind the initiative is that VR and AR will have a significant impact on the job market in the future and students should be equipped with skills around emerging technologies, as well as being familiar with their creation and implementation. Arizona State University recently worked with Dreamscape to launch their Learn Lab, helping their students to learn Biology through a variety of experiences utilizing Virtual Reality, Hand Tracking, and haptic feedback.

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An increasing number of universities are offering VR courses and opening their own VR labs. Opening VR labs is one of the most practical uses of VR in higher education and is an important step in encouraging content development and setting a global standard for VR content. Using avatars and mapped facial expressions, the students on opposite sides of the world could come together to discuss, synthesize, and learn from one another. The Esade library is rolling out a new Virtual Reality content service for students, faculty, and staff with the VirtualSpeech platform.

VR for students with learning difficulties

Nevertheless, recent studies have obtained encouraging results that individuals with ASD adapt well to wearing HMDs and are able to comprehend, learn, and interact in VEs [66,67,68]. For special populations, VR can be developed into an idealized tool for intervention and rehabilitation by providing a real-life, but more “friendly”, environment. Individuals having special physical or mental conditions may have difficulty caring for themselves or controlling their behaviors and can thus feel awkward in real-life settings with other people. However, many of them have the need to improve their social interaction abilities for their day-to-day life in the real world. This dilemma can be approached through VR technology, which provides a safe and manipulable VE where intervention can take place in a customized and incremental manner under the control of therapists [40,50].

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Similarly, Ip, et al. [46] proposed a pedagogical model for affective learning, namely, the Smart Ambience for Affective Learning (SAMAL) Model, which considers interplay between body, mind, and emotion during the learning process. Different studies and disciplines have approached the definition of VR differently [19]. Augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) are often used interchangeably with VR despite distinctions.

  • Having people with disabilities to test or, better still, help create the VR experience during multiple phases of development would guarantee this.
  • I sent my mentor Dan my paper for feedback and began to work on refining it and next week I hope to begin to finalize it.
  • Further, VR could provide individuals with ADHD that high levels of stimulation and immediate, realistic answers to behavior in the virtual world that would make them feel less anxious and more comfortable.
  • This was the first time that members of the Department of Digital Art and Design attended the prestigious invitation-only event, which took place from March 23 to 27 at MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Mass.

Besides the above breakthroughs in terms of VR-enabled emotion recognition training, researchers have also sought assistance from VR technology to enhance the understanding of how individuals with ASD perceive and handle emotional expressions. For example, Kim, et al. [140] employed a novel measure called the VR emotion sensitivity test (V-REST) [154] to examine emotion perception and interpersonal distance in ASD with the aid of a joystick. While identifying the emotions expressed by virtual avatars, participants could position themselves close to or away from the avatars through the joystick. The study discovered that compared to TD children, children with ASD approached positive happy expressions significantly less, which suggests that they might display atypical social-approach motivation, or are less sensitive to the reward of positive socio-emotional events [140]. These results call for revision and updating of the social-motivation model of ASD [155,156]. Intervention programs employing VR techniques allow repeated practice and exposure, which is a key element in treatment [61].

To reduce the cost of training students

Another part of the future of virtual reality in education is greater accessibility. As headsets and software become cheaper, virtual reality will ultimately become a ubiquitous part of education. Other benefits of virtual reality include increased collaboration, cultural competence, and fewer distractions. Indeed, according to recent research, after using VR, people have been found to exercise more as well as show more empathy, among other things.

VR for students with learning difficulties

The system contained five social communication scenarios, where the avatars narrated their experiences on various topics, such as food, sports, travel, etc. Results of a usability study with six ASD adolescents confirmed that the VIGART can dynamically record eye physiological indexes, enabling objective measures of the user’s emotion recognition capability that could, in turn, what is virtual reality in education guide the refinement of intervention strategies [73]. Considerable efforts have been made to alleviate the employment problem of individuals with ASD through VR-driven intervention systems. Burke, et al. [128] created a Virtual Interactive Training Agent (ViTA) system to offer practice in job interview skills required in interview conditions at various difficulty levels.

1. Social Functioning

This gives students with disabilities the opportunity to interact with peers”“both those with disabilities and those without”“which provides a valuable social opportunity they do not always see in classrooms. Often, students can choose an avatar, which is an animated character that represents the student in the virtual reality world. This avatar can help students https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ focus on how they visualize themselves beyond the restrictions of their disabilities. Special education students may have physical limitations that restrict the control they can exert over their regular environments. However, with virtual reality, students with disabilities can control their environments in a different way, through different movements.

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