Innovative Teaching Workshops (Powered by EdCity Innovative Teachers): VR Classroom – Using an Immersive Virtual Reality System (IVRS) to Support SEN Students' Learning

Overview

The greatest challenge in special education is to help students equip themselves with the ability to face future challenges. Due to the diversity of students' learning, they will encounter different difficulties in learning. Therefore, this school uses an innovative approach - An Immersive Virtual Reality System (IVRS) - with the traditional teaching strategy and experiential learning, for example, to help children with learning disabilities grasp essential life skills, learn crisis management, and improve emotional management. Meanwhile, IVRS also helps students develop their generic skills, develop their potential, build their confidence, face challenges, and, most importantly, integrate into the community.

The ideal way for children with intellectual disabilities to learn will be to learn in a realistic environment. Unfortunately, this is only sometimes possible, and sometimes students are not allowed to make mistakes. For example, when teaching road safety, it is difficult for teachers to let students experience the consequences of not following traffic rules due to the real-life risks. Therefore, this school decided to use the virtual reality system with the experiential learning method to enable students to acquire different knowledge and skills in a safe and controlled environment.

The VR Classroom focuses on small group teaching classes, such as General Studies and Counselling lessons. In the counselling lesson, the teacher uses picture cards and social stories to briefly explain the process of crossing the road (feelings). Then students learn the correct way to cross the road in the VR Classroom (watching and thinking). Finally, the teacher and students go out to practise crossing the street (execution).
This school is committed to promoting research on teaching and learning in schools by collecting examples and researching and analysing them to improve learning and teaching. This school collects data for the pre-test and post-test to understand the effectiveness of the VR classroom. Teachers were also involved in the study's design, such as sampling methods and scale questions, to promote a culture of action research in schools through staff participation.