Teaching Presentation and Social De-Escalation Skills with Crowd Feedback Simulation in Virtual Reality – What Students Think About It

Social skills are crucial for modern career paths, yet they are often underrepresented in higher education curricula. Role-playing is a common method to teach such skills, but it usually requires many participants. Virtual Reality (VR) offers a promising alternative by enabling immersive role-playing scenarios with automated agents. This paper reports on an experimental study with 33 students investigating a VR-based crowd feedback simulation for training presentation and social de-escalation skills.