31st Annual Student Research Conference
Towards a Social Virtual Reality Learning Environment in High Fidelity
Devin N. Hudson
Ms. Ryan Miller, Faculty Mentor
ASD Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a serious development disorder that affects 1 in every 45 children. Studies show that early intervention help children achieve increased success and independence. Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are designed to educate children with ASD via online platforms. However, traditional VLEs such as iSocial, offer limited student involvement that significantly diminishes the learning effectiveness. To overcome these drawbacks, the paper proposes vSocial, a Virtual Reality Learning Environment (VRLE) platform for training children with ASD. This work implements the Social Competence Intervention (SCI) curriculum and uses advanced technologies in high-speed networking, wearable virtual reality and cognitive state sensing devices to provide an immersive and smart online social training environment for children with ASD. This work describes the implementation of learning modules in High Fidelity as well as the "vSocial'' social portal, which integrates the session management functionalities. Our experiment results show that, when compared to Desktop mode, users feel more engaged in VR by a quantitative increase of one level in Subjective Data.
Keywords: ASD, High Fidelity, Virtual Reality, Learning Environment, Kinect
Topic(s):Computer Science
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: 9-1
Location: GEO - SUB
Time: 3:30