Virtual Reality and analytics to enhance communication skills: a multidisciplinary approach

This dissertation explores how Virtual Reality (VR) combined with data analytics can enhance the development of communication skills, with a focus on public speaking training (PST). Situated at the intersection of management sciences, computer science, linguistics, speech therapy, and psychology, the work proposes a multidisciplinary approach to studying, modelling, and improving speaker performance through multimodal behavioural analysis. Across all professional domains, from business and law to education and human resources, the ability to convey ideas clearly is essential. Whether delivering a progress report, presenting a proposal to a board, pitching a product or service to clients or investors, or leading a lecture or workshop, effective public speaking is a core professional skill. Yet for many, public speaking remains a source of significant anxiety. While traditional training often relies on in-person coaching, VR offers a promising alternative by providing realistic, interactive, and repeatable scenarios within a controlled environment. This dissertation explores how virtual environments, enhanced with automated assessment and feedback, can simulate audience dynamics and speaker-audience interactions to support the development of public speaking competence across these diverse contexts. The research is structured around eight interrelated studies, each contributing to the design, evaluation, or validation of VR-based PST systems. Methodologically, the thesis combines perception studies, experimental design, feature engineering, and predictive modelling. It leverages signal processing, speech analysis, and multimodal behavioural tracking to extract meaningful features from virtual presentations. It also introduces interpretable machine learning techniques to assess and provide feedback on speaker performance. Ultimately, this research aims to bridge the gap between technological innovation and practical training needs. It highlights how VR, supported by analytics, can deliver adaptive, evidence-based training and assessment tools for enhancing communication skills. The findings contribute to the literature on VR and affective computing while offering scalable solutions for academic, corporate, and educational training environments.