Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are spaces designed to educate students remotely via online platforms. Although traditional VLEs such as iSocial have shown promise in educating students, they offer limited immersion that diminishes learning effectiveness. This paper outlines a virtual reality learning environment (VRLE) over a high-speed network, which promotes educational effectiveness and efficiency via our creation of flexible content and infrastructure which meet established VLE standards with improved immersion. This paper further describes our implementation of multiple learning modules developed in High Fidelity, a "social VR" platform. Our experiment results show that the VR mode of content delivery better stimulates the generalization of lessons to the real world than non-VR lessons and provides improved immersion when compared to an equivalent desktop version.
@cite_3: There has been much discussion and speculation over recent years around the benefits of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in Higher Education. The 2009 Ofsted Report considered VLE's and raised a number of concerns, concluding that VLEs were least effective when they had little content or were merely a dumping ground for rarely used files. A review and investigation into virtual learning environments and the reported benefits has been undertaken to understand the value these pedagogic systems provide to the students, and how this has an impact on their learning journey within the programme of study. Distance learning and engagement is addresses. Situated computing is introduced. The paper concludes that the use of a VLE, when correctly implemented, improves student performance in terms of results with a perceived correlation in terms of engagement.
@cite_1: Virtual reality appears to be a promising and motivating platform to safely practice and rehearse social skills for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, the literature to date is subject to limitations in elucidating the effectiveness of these virtual reality interventions. This study investigated the impact of a Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training to enhance social skills in children with ASD. Thirty children between the ages of 7-16 diagnosed with ASD completed 10, 1-h sessions across 5 weeks. Three primary domains were measured pre-post: emotion recognition, social attribution, attention and executive function. Results revealed improvements on measures of emotion recognition, social attribution, and executive function of analogical reasoning. These preliminary findings suggest that the use of a virtual reality platform offers an effective treatment option for improving social impairments commonly found in ASD. The VR-SCT provides an interactive and stimulating approach for children with ASD.The VR-SCT can improve social cognitive skills in children with ASD.Training improved emotion recognition, social attribution, and executive function.The training is a safe and socially non-threatening platform.
@cite_7: 
@cite_7 defines 3D VLEs as computer-generated, three-dimensional simulated environments that are coupled with well-defined learning objectives.'' Students enter these environments as avatars via a networked computer and interact with each other with text chat, voice chat, and the manipulation of shared objects. Adding VR to VLEs can offer efficient generalization of skills from a virtual environment to the real world, since the environment mimics real world imagery and context as noted by @cite_1 . @cite_3 presents a review and investigation into VRLE's and the reported benefits these pedagogic systems provide to the students, as well as how they impact students' learning journeys within the program of study. The authors conclude that a correctly implemented VLE improves student performance and is correlated with improved engagement.