Virtual Learning Environments for Students with Disabilities: A Review and Analysis of the Empirical Literature and Two Case Studies
Eleazar Vasquez, Arjun Nagendran, Greg Welch, Matthew T. Marino, Darin E. Hughes, Aaron Koch, Lauren Delisio · Rural Special Education Quarterly · 2015
Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show varying levels of impairment in social skills situations. Interventions have been developed utilizing virtual environments (VEs) to teach and improve social skills. This article presents a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles focusing on social interventions in VEs involving K-12 th grade students with ASD. This exhaustive analysis across four major online databases was guided by operational terms related to intervention type and K-12 students with ASD. The empirical search yielded a very narrow body of literature (n=19) on the use of VEs as social skill interventions for students with ASD. Two case study examples of experiments exploring the use of VEs and students with ASD are presented to illustrate possible applications of this technology.