Teaching students on the autism spectrum and learning difficulties how to ‘learn to learn’ by developing and assessing an Immersive Virutal Reality (IVR) educational tool is the objective of a new European project in which Autism-Europe is involved as dissemination partner.
The Immersive Virtual Reality as a Tool for Autistic Pupils and Teachers project (IVRAP) will incorporate all the necessary elements of an Individual Work System (IWS), together with the powerful supports provided by means of virtual reality. Funded by the Commission’s Programme Erasmus+, the final result of the project will combine one of the most extended models of autism intervention on education IWS with the power of IVR and Hand-Tracking sensors to manipulated virtual environments.
IVRAP will also conduct a research with a larger sample of students in order to scientifically validate the IVR IWS and produce both a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Virtual Reality and Autism, and Policy Recommendations related to the assessment of an IVR learning toolkit.
On January 9 and 10 2020, a total of 18 professionals working on the IVRAP project met in Brussels for the first time at the project’s kickoff meeting, organized by Autism-Europe. The multi-sectoral team of nine partners built for this project includes researchers from two participating universities from Spain, and the UK (including project coordinator the University of Valencia); teachers and autistic people and their families from the four schools involved from Spain, the UK, and Turkey; two continous training institutions from the two regional governments in Spain and Turkey, and the umbrella organisation Autism-Europe.
IVRAP partners will meet again on October 2020 in Valencia, Spain. The project foresees four transnational meetings and three national events in Spain, the UK and Turkey over its two-years lifespan.