The Research and Education Center "Digital Technologies in Education" of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University conducted a training "VR technologies as a tool for developing storytelling skills" for 1st-year undergraduates of the programs "Corporate Finance", "Business Analytics and Big Data", "Management of Smart city." The event took place within the framework of the course “Professional Communications: Language Aspects. Storytelling."

35 students immersed themselves in immersion reality with the help of VR glasses and told stories to the virtual listeners in English. The training participants received feedback from the VR simulator on how they managed to maintain eye contact with the audience, control the clarity and volume of the voice during the speech, concentrate on their story and not be distracted by external irritants.

The training was moderated by the experts: Sergey Lukashkin, Director of the Research and Education Center "Digital Technologies in Education" at GSOM SPbU, Tatiana Marfina, Manager of the Research and Education Center "Digital Technologies in Education" at GSOM SPbU, Albina Kaminskaya, Assistant at the Department of Foreign Languages in Management.

At the end, the participants discussed the results of the work. The students shared their experience of passing the training, expressed their opinion on the relevance of using VR technologies in education and suggested the ideas for improving the real VR simulator, as well as for developing new simulators. The discussion was attended by the teachers of the course “Professional Communications: Language Aspects. Storytelling”: Elena Orlova, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages in Management, St. Petersburg State University and Tatyana Martynova, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages in Management, St. Petersburg State University.

“It is important for our Center to introduce digital tools that are useful for students and teachers, such as VR simulators. Both teachers and students note the benefits of the simulator for training speech and presentation skills. I am sure that these skills will be in demand for children not only in their studies, but also after graduation, at work,” said Sergey Lukashkin, Director of the Digital Technologies in Education Research and Education Center.

“The VR simulator complements qualitatively the feedback from the instructor and allows students to improve their public speaking skills — maintain constant eye contact with the audience, control the reaction of listeners in response to the manner of speaking and manage the communication process,” shared her opinion Tatyana Martynova, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages at in the field of management at St. Petersburg State University.