Developing oral presentation skills is an essential objective of higher education. While previous research emphasized the importance of practice for developing oral presentation skills (OPS), it remains unclear what the optimal amount of practice is. This experimental field study examined the added benefit of an extra practice session in virtual reality (VR) on the progression of 35 graduate students in OPS, using a pre-test post-test design. In addition, the mediating effect of public speaking anxiety (PSA) was examined and the relation between PSA , preparation practices, perceived utility of VR and OPS was explored. Questionnaires and performance assessments were used in data collection. Results showed that participants gained benefits from practicing a third time before a virtual audience. Both anxious and non-anxious participants progressed similarly on presentation skills and experienced the VR intervention comparably. However, the optimal number of practice presentations remains unclear and should be further investigated.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.