THE PROJECT

The main Objectives of the project are:

To develop a description of the social communication deficits of individuals with Autism and the recognition for the value of using VR.
To design and develop an Interpersonal, communication and social intelligence skills curriculum for individuals with ASD
To develop a toolkit with an initial set of VR social stories that will be used for both training and assessment purposes.
To develop a certification system for the assessment of the training content. Each training module will consist of learning objectives that will correspond to training scenarios. Each scenario will be based on a social script with the trainee using an avatar in order to respond to the different situations.
To train partners' staff in the use of VR technologies.
To train 10 individuals with ASD in each country (Greece, Ireland, Denmark and Cyprus) in order to test the effect of the methodology and the tools.
To develop a matching mechanism for identifying the best job profile for each individual based on his/her achievements.
To offer the toolkit for free and the corresponding manuals to be used worldwide.

To this goal, and in relation to the objectives listed previously, the expected results are:

A. during the project:

To design and develop an innovative curriculum and the corresponding certified materials and assessment methods. An interpersonal, communication and social intelligence skills curriculum will be developed that will be exploiting VR both as a training tool and also as an assessment tool.
To train staff, involved with the training of people with autism, in understanding and using VR
To train staff in order to be able to create more social stories using VR
To train 40 individuals with autism using the project materials and tools and receive feedback. A sample of young adults with Autism will be trained using VR and will give feedback regarding their social and/or occupational experiences.

B. on the project's completion:

To have raised awareness on the project results, offering for free the developed curriculum and the accompanying VR social stories as well as a best practice and replication guide on how to use them.
To have ensured sustainability by (a) proving the added value of the developed methodologies and tools. The project will deliver a detailed description of social communication deficits of individuals with Autism and prove how VR can help, (b) by creating an authoring tool and a community of users able to create additional social stories using the authoring toolkit, and (c) by certifying the training contents and tools.