VR helps kids with disabilities, autism

Bid to teach students social competency skills

LOS ANGELES, Dec 12, (RTRS): The United States Department of Education is betting on virtual reality to help students with high-functioning autism and learning disabilities in schools across the country. This month the Office of Special Education and Programs announced its investment of $2.5 million toward a new program that will use VR to nurture social skills in students with disabilities – an extension on earlier funding for versions of the program designed for desktop and tablets in 2011.

The project is called VOISS: Virtual Reality Opportunities to Implement Social Skills, and is developed by researchers at the University of Kansas’ Center for Research on Learning and Department of Special Education – a collective of academics and PhDs who are treading the waters that intersect virtual reality and education. In addition to students and teachers participating in the project, KU researchers will work in collaboration with educational leaders at the Ohio Center on Autism and Low Incidence Disabilities and a team of computer scientists at Western Illinois University.

Students with disabilities often do not learn social skills or pick up on social cues at the same pace as their peers. So, posit the researchers, could these behaviors be cultivated in a safe, controlled, but virtual environment?

“With previous funding, we developed and did initial testing of our virtual reality tool to develop and improve social competencies with students with high-functioning autism and learning disabilities,” says Sean Smith, professor of special education and co-principal investigator of the project. “Based on that work, we’ve wanted to expand and further investigate this tool with students and teachers in schools, and this grant will allow us to do that.”

With this second injection from the Department of Education, researchers will develop a five-year program to implement social-centric VR and provide evidence that the system actually works. VOISS will be taken to a minimum of 17 schools throughout the Midwest, where middle-school students will be able to interact with avatars in virtual school hallways, lunchrooms, locker rooms, buses, and classrooms, and react to schoolbased social situations – A conversation, a response to questions asked, or problem-solving in the everyday. Soon new settings will be added, including a movie theater and sports arena.

“Once the user puts on the VR HMD, will be able to walk around the various environments exploring different situations,” says Smith. “The user will be able to walk up and interact with computer-driven avatars. This interaction will allow the user to understand consequences or positive or negative interactions. For instance, if the user is constantly looking down, the avatars may cut the conversation short and walk away. However, if the user makes eye contact, then the avatar will respond positively by smiling and conversing with the user.”

“Our idea is to use virtual reality to explicitly teach students these social competency skills and how to generalize them in their natural environments. Likewise, we want to equip teachers with ways to implement virtual reality and support student generalization of skills into the classroom setting,” writes Amber Rowland, PhD in the official press release for the University of Kansas.

Rowland is an assistant research professor with the Center for Research on Learning and Co-Principal Investigator on the project. “The development has always focused on schoolbased access and thus, we developed the virtual experience for what K-12 school would in respect to technology access,” she tells Variety. “At the time of our initial development, desktop and laptops were the norm. We were able to develop for the iPad in 2015.”

In its current state, the program can be used on any computer or mobile device and in fact doesn’t require the use of a VR headset, says Rowland.

“We are purposefully developing in the web and in headsets so that there is greater access to the benefits of VR and also because many students with Autism do not want things on their face. So, students will be able to use the system wherever they have access to a web-enabled device. At this time, high powered VR headsets are not commonplace in schools or many homes.

But it’s only a matter of time before virtual reality becomes a mainstream preoccupation, Rowland continues. “We anticipate during the five years of this grant that will shift. At first, we would anticipate these sorts of VR headsets being kept at school and used there, but as systems become more prevalent, we anticipate students owning their own.”

And yet why use VR as a teaching environment at all?

According to researchers, the safe and controlled environments of virtual reality can indeed be ideal for students with autism, students whose perception isn’t just different but often superior.