Abstract:

This study describes the experience of developing and implementing exclusive language courses on the basis of a custom Virtual Reality (VR) platform in various comprehensive higher education programs of general English and language for specific purposes (LSP).

The timeframe analyzed in this study includes the part of the experiment that spanned 30 months, from early 2023 to late 2025 and included 11000 standalone VR simulations among 1806 users. The process consisted of such stages as pilot testing among the faculty members, event presentations, faculty training, scenario development, content review, student onboarding, guided learning, comprehension check and feedback submission, followed by analysis of quantitative and qualitative parameters.

All of the steps described above help the faculty to establish and improve the framework for future VR programs, iterating on each new module in order to maximize its efficiency and align the program and its content with the methodology of teaching a particular discipline.

The key findings of the study have revealed the multitude of challenges of introducing VR courses for language learning in higher education – from linguistic methodology and psychological adaptations of students and faculty to technical arrangements and housekeeping issues. They serve as the best practices that facilitate establishing a framework of introducing VR courses and can be extrapolated to implementing other modern technical solutions.

Keywords:

VR, Virtual Reality, Course, Curriculum.