Reading report: Li, C., Ip, H.H.S. and Ma, P.K. (2019). A design framework of virtual reality enabled experiential learning for children with autism spectrum disorder. In Cheung, S.K.S, Lee, L.K., Simonova, I., Kozel, T. and Kwok, L.F. (Eds.), Blended learning: Educational innovation for personalized learning. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
With the emergence of virtual reality technology, researchers have worked on the potential benefits of a virtual environment in therapeutic and learning field, especially for children with special needs. This article shows us a few ways to work with this technology to create a learning space for children with autism spectrum disorder. Virtual reality can provide a safe and controlled environment for those children. Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by social difficulties, and the virtual reality technology can be an effective tool for training social skills that are crucial to help children with autism spectrum disorder to better participate in the society. There are not a lot of studies in this field at the time, but we can observe some great possibilities about what virtual reality has to offer for people with special needs, especially on learning potentialities.
The authors lean on Kolb’s experiential learning model (ELM) that suggest a four-step learning process (experience, observation, conceptualization and experimentation). Based on this model, they develop a virtual reality program to create a learning environment, especially to improve social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder. Their previous studies have shown that virtual reality has a great potential for these children because it provides a hazardless environment where they can develop their social skills without worrying about the real world. However, they underline a lack of studies on this research field. They underlined a specific question linked to the special learning needs of children with autism spectrum disorder: in order to create an effective virtual environment where social skill learning can be efficient, children have to be isolated from the surroundings during the exposure of this technology. However, in order to do that and to make the children feel safer, they have to integrate facilitation such as feedback during the virtual reality immersion.
With this study, they wanted to explore and develop virtual situations that put the children in an interactive environment with feedback and facilitation to help them achieving the learning objectives. They develop two programs:
- the first one is interactive social stories: this program put the children in situations where they have to integrate a social norm and to propose a socially appropriate answer to the situation.
- The second one is the social incident experiencing: in this scenario, the children are put in a virtual environment from a first-person perspective in which they actively experiment to develop social skills.
Three case study reports are presented in this article. They briefly introduce the first sessions and develop how children lived the experience. Next, they describe the learning evolution for these children. Finally, they propose hypothesis for the next studies.
For two of them, the first session was complicated because the they shown some anxiety in wearing the virtual reality technology on their head. They both finally accepted to wear it, but one of them express the need to check if his educator was still in the room during the session. after a short time, all the children were able to begin the scenarios and were enthusiastic once they were reassured. The results of the experiment show the children often needed facilitations during the sessions which provided quick and effective learning for these children. They quickly learned the social norms included in the scenarios and were able to generalize those norms in the real life.
Despite the lack of studies at the time and the small sample of this study, this article shows that a well-designed virtual environment can be an effective tool for children with autism spectrum disorder if it can meet their learning needs. The facilitations included in the programs seem to give some great results for now. Further studies with a bigger sample are needed to show the real effectiveness of this technology for people with special learning needs.
Words I have learned
- Hazardless : sans aléa, sans danger
- Surrounding : environnement, alentours
- Facilitation : facilitation, aide