The Future of Education

Public speaking is an intimidating experience for most people (Furmark et al., 1999) with more than 80% of students reporting that delivering presentations was associated with frequent social anxiety (Russell and Topham, 2012). Yet, public speaking is identified as a crucial skill for participation in university life and a foundational skill in the future world of work (Dondi et al., 2021). Virtual reality (VR) based training is commonplace within medical, military, and aviation industries for the purpose of developing practical skills in a risk-free environment. This approach has been used to embed an immersive, virtual reality-based public speaking assessment into a core, first-year academic skills and methods module in Politics for approximately 300 students each year. The activity aimed to support students to develop their public speaking skills and self-confidence in a safe and non-judgmental virtual environment, including one-to-one training with a virtual coach and personalised AI-driven feedback. The impact of this VR-based assessment is compelling. Before the activity, around half of respondents (49%) felt confident in their public speaking skills; this increased to 64% post-activity. Similarly, there was a 12% reduction in students reporting low confidence, decreasing from 25% to 13% following participation. The activity therefore both enhanced the skills of the most confident speakers and significantly supported the least confident students. 75% agreed that the experience equipped them with the necessary techniques for effective public speaking and 89% reported that they felt that VR had enriched their learning experience as part of this module.