Augmented Virtuality Training for Special Education Teachers

Valentin Antoni, Felix Maurer, Odile Cesari, Christian Eichhorn, Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson

Abstract: The last decade has seen a significant surge in the popularity of virtual reality in countless fields and it keeps on spreading into more areas of application. While Virtual Reality (VR) is already being used in various educational settings, such as medicine and teaching, the technology is constantly being enhanced and augmented into Mixed Reality (MR) approaches. Especially in the training of certain skills, mixed reality provides numerous new training perspectives. The specific domain of special education is no exception to that fact and potential applications of VR are increasingly being explored. The aim of this work is to develop a VR trainer tor the training of special educators, in order for them to acquire new skills in specific teaching techniques. All aspects of this work are conducted in collaboration with Reykjavik University, where previous work on the topic was conducted in 2017. The goal is to improve on the existing trainer by adding new interaction modalities, such as voice input and virtual touch. In addition to that, the state of the art is pushed even further by introducing Augmented Virtuality (AV) through physical objects in a second version of this trainer. The goal of implementing a new simulator for training special education teachers is successfully achieved, as witnessed during two user tests with students and teachers from the field of special education. In the future, this VR trainer will continue to be used at Reykjavik University, superseding the previous one. The goal of introducing AV through physical objects is achieved through a viable technical solution that still needs to be simplified in its deployment before extensive user testing.