Virtual Reality for Adult Training

Abstract: In many different industries including IT, business, medicine, engineering, and many more, technology refers to a collection of methods and information that are used to develop, produce, and improve services and products. Technology has evolved quickly in recent years, and innovations have completely changed how we work, live, and interact with the world. For instance, the Internet has made it possible to access a vast quantity of information and quick communication through a variety of applications like Facebook and Instagram, and being able to swiftly access it on our phones enables us to be constantly connected to social networks and various other resources. As such, digital technologies offer a unique opportunity to improve educational standards. On the one hand, teachers and trainers become equipped with cutting-edge tools that help them engage their classroom with contextualized information in a way that is not only personalized and differentiated according to everyone's distinctive progress and needs but also time-efficient. Alternatively, students benefit from a customized learning experience that is also sensitive to their performance, sometimes through an immersive experience, to be able to go on and use their education to contribute to the society they will live in in the future. As such, the advantages of integrating digital technologies with pedagogy to develop an elevated learning environment have become increasingly apparent. Virtual reality is one of the most recent developments in technological innovation that is being used as a tool for educators in the educational process in nations with more developed economies. People are captivated by virtual reality because of the intriguing images, the distinctive experience it provides, and the way it captures their attention consistently.  Immersion in a virtual space becomes an experience through which users can unconsciously integrate the knowledge, images, and content they are exposed to, which has a real and positive effect on their mental health. Training in fields where the direct experience could provoke more cognitive and behavioral damage is training teachers for children with special needs. As it offers a realistic and interactive experience in a regulated and safe setting, virtual reality can be a highly beneficial tool for the training and education of teachers working in such environments. In such an immersive environment, teachers can learn how to react appropriately and deal with challenging situations because a virtual reality application can simulate scenarios that imitate the distinctive behaviors of children. In these scenarios, each child's particular needs and preferences may be attended to, which might be challenging to imitate in the real world. The current work seeks to create experimental game scenarios tailored for special needs classroom training, assess their usefulness, and examine how they affect the growth of children's social and communicative abilities. The game scenarios are based on real teaching practice in different contexts working with special needs children and integrate practical innovative methodologies in instruction. Functionalities to help adults learn and recognize easily real-life scenarios in the classroom context and instruments to manage difficult emotional and behavioral manifestations of children between 3-6 years old make the approach a solution to consider for future training of specialized personal and not only.

Keywords: VR, Adult training, special needs, teacher training

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004441

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