The importance of automated realtime performance feedback in virtual reality temporal bone surgery training xc2xa9 Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a training platform in many fields including surgery. However, practice on VR simulators alone is not sufficient to impart skills. Provision of performance feedback is essential to enable skill acquisition by ensuring that mistakes are identified and corrected, strengths are reinforced, and insights into consequences of actions are provided. As such, for a simulation system to be an effective training platform and to enable selfdirected learning, it is imperative that automated performance feedback is provided by the system. Although there has been increased interest in the development of feedback methodologies in VRbased surgical training in recent years, their effectiveness in practice has rarely been investigated. In this paper, we investigate the impact of performance feedback in a VRbased surgical training platform with respect to skill acquisition and retention through a randomized controlled trial. We show that feedback during training is essential for both acquisition and retention of surgical skills.

Acceptance and Effectiveness of a Virtual Reality Public Speaking Training Virtual Reality (VR) has been gaining importance due to its numerous advantages as an immersive technology for learning applications. Next to being used in fields like manufacturing, transportation, communication, retail and real estate, it has also increased in significance for human resources development. Virtual human training programs offer exposure to difficult situations without supervision in a safe and controlled environment, as they simulate nuanced interpersonal situations and therefore allow users to gain new skills and apply them to reallife situations. Furthermore, VR training engages employees in a training session by being presented with a realistic situation designed to challenge and engage them. Practising in a controlled virtual environment also allows for easy and objective measurements of user development and the identification of strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we evaluate if there is acceptance for practising a presentation in a VRSpeech Training (VRST) session using six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) and if the 44 participants of this study improved, from a subjective point of view, valuable soft skills needed to give a convincing presentation in real life. We observed a positive tendency in the acceptance and effectiveness of the VRST.