Development of virtual reality (VR) paradigms for assisting student training in special needs education

Background

Virtual reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create simulated environments. Virtual reality places the user inside a three-dimensional experience. Instead of viewing a screen in front of them, users are immersed in and interact with 3D worlds. In recent years, affordable VR products (VR headsets) have appeared on the market that now offer a substantial level of comfort, user-friendliness and capability.

Goal

The aim of this project is to investigate whether and how VR technology can provide innovative, effective, and targeted training to students within the field of special needs education. Specifically, we aim to design VR paradigms that can be used as a tool for training students in how to assess a child with learning difficulties and how to provide an educational remediation program.

This solution has the potential to benefit students’ practicum education. Challenges with the current practicum procedures include a high administrative and economic cost, variable quality of the practicum experience and supervision, availability of relevant cases, and more. As an alternative to this, VR simulations of practicum cases have the potential to be standardized, high quality, low-cost, tailor-made to a variety of cases, highly available, and well supervised.

In addition, such VR paradigms can be used for teaching and training Master’s students in the administration of particular assessment measures, such as cognitive, language, math tests and other measures that are used in the field of special needs education. 

About the project

In this project a student will wear a VR headset, will be immersed in an interactive assessment room with a child with a learning difficulty, and administer a particular assessment tool to the child.

Simulations can be done in two ways:

1. Using 3D generated animations and characters.
2. Using multiple clips of 180 or 360 degree real life video recordings which are dynamically played back in a particular order, thereby creating an interactive simulation.

We will use real life video recordings with a child actor. The students will have to take the child through all the steps of such a scenario, and thereby gain experience on how to interact with a child, as well as how to administer the specific tool.

A supervisor can observe the interaction from outside and provide feedback, during or after the simulation. In order to progress through the different phases of the simulated interaction, the students have to utter specific instructions aloud to the child, as they would in a real-life scenario. The program will recognize when and how to continue the simulation by AI voice recognition, using traditional option buttons, or a combination of the two.