Effect of Virtual Intervention Technology in Virtual Vocational Training for People with Intellectual Disabilities: Connecting Instructor in the Real World and Trainee in the Virtual World

There are various social support services to help people with intellectual disabilities (ID) find jobs for their independent social and economic activities in life. With the advancement of virtual reality (VR) technologies, vocational training can take place in a virtual environment (VE) without temporal and spatial limitations. Therefore, opportunities for people with ID to receive professional vocational training in a VE continue to expand. Accordingly, this study proposes that virtual intervention (VI) technology can improve the effects of virtual training and learning transfer from the virtual to the real world. We defined VI as a supportive activity that assists trainees in a VE according to their individual ability and training situation through an instructor’s control in the real world. We designed the virtual intervention content (VIC) as intervening virtual objects and applied them to a virtual barista job training program. We developed the virtual intervention interface (VII) for smoothly supporting the interaction between the trainee in the VE and the instructor in the real world, especially for people with ID or beginner trainees. In this study, we derived statistically significant findings that demonstrated the effects of VI technology through two experiments conducted with 39 participants with ID. Firstly, VIC showed an effective intervention function that helped the participants solve problems during virtual vocational training. Also, we observed differences in the intervention effect according to the sensory perception characteristics of the participants. Secondly, trainees’ barista job performance rates improved by 37.43% after receiving virtual training. Moreover, the effects of training were largely maintained in the job performance assessment after three weeks in an actual cafe situation. This suggests that the effects of VI-based virtual training are meaningful not only within the VE but also in the real world for the transfer of learning. Furthermore, the VI method was significantly more effective and efficient than the conventional method using the human instructor’s verbal and physical intervention in terms of time, frequency, and success rate.