Development of effective oral presentation skills is an essential component of entrepreneurship education, but class size and time constraints can limit opportunities to practice and receive quality feedback. Immersive virtual reality can provide time- and place-independent opportunities to hone presentation skills in diverse settings with…

Virtual reality (VR) technology is making its mark across market sectors (e.g., gaming, healthcare, tourism). This paper examines the use of VR in education, specifically in business classes, to better understand how this technology can help students improve their communication skills associated in delivering effective presentations and…

The rapid development of information and communication technologies has enabled the development of interfaces, which allow the recognition of the gestures and movements of the user. These interfaces, due to their affordable prices, are available to a wide range of users. They are called natural user interfaces (NUI). NUI are commonly used in game…

Effective strategies to address academic performance are critical to students with disabilities in inclusive settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using gesture-based instruction via Leap Motion-aided virtual reality (VR) technology to teach matching skills to school-aged students with autism spectrum disorder…

Despite recent advancements in the field of Autism, young adults with a diagnosis of ASD continue to struggle working and living independently (Thompson, 2013). Competitive employment is a quality of life indicator (Garcia-Villamisar & Hughes, 2007; Garcia-Villamisar, Wehman, & Navarro, 2002; Hendricks, 2010; Hurlbutt & Chalmers, 2010;…

School-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have delayed gestural development, in comparison with age-matched typically developing children. In this study, an intervention program taught children with low-functioning ASD gestural comprehension and production using video modelling (VM) by a computer-generated robot animation. Six to…

Multimodality, the study of the interaction of language with other semiotic resources such as images and sound resources, has significant implications for computer assisted language learning (CALL) with regards to understanding the impact of digital environments on language teaching and learning. In this paper, we explore recent manifestations of…

Nearly one in three students in the United States today is negatively impacted by bullying. Teachers can play a critical role in stopping bullying-related violence, but many struggle with how to engage students in difficult conversations. Traditional classroom-based pedagogy used to teach communication skills (e.g., modeling & role-play) is…

Nearly one in three students in the United States today is negatively impacted by bullying. Teachers can play a critical role in stopping bullying-related violence, but many struggle with how to engage students in difficult conversations. Traditional classroom-based pedagogy used to teach communication skills (e.g., modeling & role-play) is…

Training firefighters is a difficult process in which emotions and nonverbal behaviors play an important role. The authors have developed a mixed reality environment for training a small group of firefighters, which takes into account these aspects. The assessment of the environment was made up of three phases: assessing the virtual agents to…