UH-Manoa launches interactive VR lab to help students sharpen public speaking skills

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The University of Hawaii at Manoa has a new interactive, virtual reality (VR) lab to help students, faculty and staff sharpen their public speaking skills.

The lab features a VR headset and innovative software that delivers immediate feedback (a variety of criteria from eye contact to hand gestures) after users practice their speeches.

This program is managed by the Center for Communicating Scientific Information in the Communicology Program.

Funding for the VR lab was provided through extramural funding from the National Science Foundation.

The goals of the VR lab are to help users develop their public speaking skills, and for researchers to better communicate their research in ways that people can understand and use in the future.

According to project leaders, the feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive.

The lab is currently only open to the UH community, with priority given to researchers on the National Science Foundation grant. But eventually project leaders would like to open the lab up to the public, including K-12 students.

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