An interactive 3D virtual environment to
reduce the public speaking anxiety levels
of novice software engineers
Nazligul, Merve Denizci, Yilmaz, MuratORCID: 0000-0002-2446-3224, Güleç, Ulaş, Yılmaz, Adviye Esin, Isler, Veysi, O'Connor, RoryORCID: 0000-0001-9253-0313, Gozcu, M.A. and Clarke, PaulORCID: 0000-0002-4487-627X
(2019)
An interactive 3D virtual environment to
reduce the public speaking anxiety levels
of novice software engineers.
IET Control Theory and Applications, 13
(2).
pp. 152-158.
ISSN 1751-8644
Software engineering is a set of activities that relies no only on technical tasks but also requires abilities focused on social
duties such as daily meetings and product introduction presentations. However, engineers may experience elevated levels of
anxiety when required to present their work in an unfamiliar environment. More specifically, they may suffer from public speaking
anxiety even though they are supposed to be effective in those social tasks as well as in their engineering activities. Fortunately,
previous studies suggest that virtual exposure therapy is an effective strategy to reduce public speaking anxiety. In this study, an
interactive 3D virtual environment similar to real classrooms and auditoriums was developed to examine if this might decrease
the anxiety levels of novice software engineers. To compare traditional and virtual exposure therapy, the sample set (N = 14)
was divided equally into 2 groups including one experimental group and one control group. For 4 weeks, the virtual exposure
therapy was conducted in the experimental group whereas psychoeducation was used in the control group. The findings from our
study illustrate that virtual exposure therapy may be represent an alternative solution to the traditional therapeutic intervention for
software engineers seeking to overcome public presentation anxiety
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Additional Information:
This journal was previously known as IEE Proceedings - Control Theory and Applications 1994-2006. ISSN 1350-2379