Virtual reality simulations as a new tool for practicing presentations and refining public-speaking skills
Oliver Niebuhr, Jan Michalsky · 2018
Presentations are typically practiced alone while talking to oneself in a silent room. It is not only questionable whether such a rehearsal setting is a proper preparation for a real public-speaking situation. Giving the same talk repeatedly to oneself also bears the risk that speaking "erodes" from the communicative act of conveying a message into a mere mechanical exercise that is neither content- nor audience-oriented. Against this background, it is tested from a digital-humanities perspective whether a VR public-speaking simulation, in which a speaker can rehearse his/her talk in a virtual conference room and in front of a virtual audience, is a suitable and preferable alternative to practicing a presentation on one's own. Prosodic measures of speaking style are analyzed and compared between two groups of 12 speakers, a control group and a VR test group, each of which performed several rounds of practicing. Results suggest that test-group speakers take the VR environment seriously and show, unlike control group speakers, an audience-oriented, more charismatic speaking style, with reduced signs of prosodic erosion due to repeated rehearsal. These findings are discussed in the light of digital humanities applications of VR technology.