Essay title: Pre-service and in-service teachers' vocal, psychophysiological and self-reported responses to different 360-degree virtual classroom environments
Among schoolteachers, voice problems are highly prevalent. As these schoolteacher patients undergo behavioural voice therapy with speech-language pathologists, a common challenge they experience is the difficulty in generalising voicing skills learned in a clinic environment to a real-life classroom teaching environment.
In light of this, my research project aims to investigate the effects of different 360-degree virtual reality (VR) classrooms with increasing level of contextual distractions on teachers’ vocal and psychophysiological performance, which is important regarding the possible impact and applicability of 360-degree VR in voice therapy, as a bridge from clinic exercises to actual classrooms.
Pre-service and in-service teachers would be recruited to complete background questionnaires and participate in individual lab sessions, during which they carry out announcement tasks while viewing six 360-degree VR classrooms of varying student attentiveness, parent attendance and parent attentiveness. The teachers’ voice quality and psychophysiological indicators (heart rate (BPM) and oxygen saturation (SpO2), etc) during viewing, as well as perceived vocal effort, and emotional intensity after each VR classroom would be collected for analysis.
Through understanding teachers' perceptions of and reactions towards simulated classroom environments, such as VR classrooms, this project may provide insights into the application of virtual reality technology for voice assessment, training, and skills generalisation for teachers, which bears the potential for further investigation.
Supervisor: Prof. Estella P.M. Ma, HKU