Implementing VirtualSpeech into Maastricht University's School of Business and DEXLab
Discover how VirtualSpeech empowers students at Maastricht University to refine their communication skills, providing personalized feedback and realistic presentation practice
Highlights
Skills
Essential Public Speaking and presentation skills.
55,000
minutes spent in VR
94%
of students found the feedback valuable
97%
would recommend the training
Customer Introduction
Maastricht University's School of Business and Economics Digital Experience Laboratory (DEXLab) is a digital research and education community, providing a space for research, learning, and knowledge exchange around user's digital experiences in business environments.
Thanks to this research project, four out of six Maastricht University faculties will pilot the use of presentation skills training in virtual reality, specifically through VirtualSpeech.
The Goal
Students in higher education need continuous, personalised, and high-quality feedback to develop and enhance the practice of their (hard and soft) skills. Yet, providing such feedback requires significant resources, such as a large amount of teaching personnel with adequate expertise and appropriate time for giving feedback.
As this is often not the case, students continuously report receiving sub-standard feedback in higher education.
Student
"I really like the feedback as soon as I finished presenting, and that I felt immersed in the situation, as if there was a group of people in my room"
The Solution
The DEXLab, aimed to implement an AI-based VR presentation tool like VirtualSpeech to enhance students' training. Traditional feedback on oral presentations is often limited and content-focused, while students seek detailed individual feedback. A VR-based system providing real-time insights on eye contact, loudness, listenability, and filler words—along with a supportive virtual audience—enables effective, independent practice.
Results and Benefits
VirtualSpeech delivered significant benefits for both the students and the teachers:
For students, VR training reduced communication related anxieties thanks to the presence of a realistic and engaging audience, availability of multiple realistic training scenarios and real-time feedback provided by the AI embedded in the software.
- 96% agree that using VirtualSpeech is realistic preparation for a final presentation
- 90% agree that they found the task to be motivating
For teachers, VR training saved time by reducing the need for teacher-led feedback on presentation delivery, allowing them to focus more on the content of students' presentations.
