Development of a virtual audience concept for public speaking training in immersive virtual environments

Public speaking is common in today's work and study environment, yet many people dread giving presentations and sometimes even avoid them altogether. A frequent solution is to take up public speaking courses where speakers can learn presentation skills from speech trainers and rehearse in front of other trainees. By combining the opportunities of virtual reality with the characteristics and challenges of training sessions, the dissertation proposes a design concept for a virtual audience that can serve as speech training tool in immersive virtual environments. Through this approach the research addresses public speaking from a training angle - a novel view that wishes to complement the existing speech anxiety treatment studies in virtual reality. The work rests on a multidisciplinary ground and includes perspectives from interpersonal communication, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and design of virtual learning environments.