The Future of Social Communication Instruction through Technology: A Q+A With Co-Founder Sean Smith

As technology continues to shape education, new tools are creating opportunities to better support students who struggle in traditional learning environments, including students with disabilities. Skills like communicating with peers, navigating social situations, working independently, and participating in group settings can have a significant impact on students’ ability to learn and succeed, yet these skills are difficult to practice and teach. VOISS provides a scalable solution to address that need.

VOISS Co-Founder and Principal Investigator Sean Smith, Ph.D has spent his career exploring how technology can support struggling learners and students with disabilities, from familiar tools like text-to-speech and word prediction to emerging technologies like virtual reality and AI. His research has examined both how these tools can be integrated into instruction and how they can give students opportunities to practice skills in ways that are accessible, available to their learning needs, personalized, and safe.

In this Q&A, Smith discusses what decades of research have taught him about the potential of educational technology, why teachers need support rather than another demand on their time, and how creating intentional opportunities to teach social skills can change students’ experiences in school and beyond. He also looks at the role VOISS could play in advancing personalized learning and giving educators data they can use to better understand what their students need.

How have you seen innovations and technological solutions support struggling learners and those with disabilities?

The two primary areas we’ve researched are writing and social competence (social skill development). On the writing side, we have all of this innovation embedded in our tools, including word prediction, text-to-speech, and spell checkers, and a host of things we take for granted. My focus has been on creating tools and interventions that lead to student use to improve their learning outcomes.

VOISS focuses on the social competence area. We designed VOISS as a virtual reality environment to offer a way for students to practice social skills with no consequences. If I’m crashing and burning on practicing social skills in the real-life cafeteria, other students will remember. In a simulated environment, students can practice and make mistakes without having to suffer from them.

We designed the app to be as realistic and accessible as possible. We’ve increased from about 37 scenarios when we launched to a full curriculum with more than 140. Students can use the VOISS app on a tablet, Google Chromebook, or iPad. And it’s voice-based, which enhances the realistic experience. 

In our research, we found that students felt as if they were in an actual cafeteria, classroom, or hallway within three or four seconds in the VOISS environment. If a student feels present within a virtual environment, they’re able to gain knowledge and skills through the simulation.

How do educators engage with the tool? Teachers already have a lot on their plates. How do you help them see that these technologies will be additive rather than just another thing they have to check off their list?

Educators need the freedom to realize they don’t need to know every single thing about a technology to use it effectively in the classroom. If you make the technology available to your students and they become competent with it, they can usually run with it. We designed VOISS with built-in reporting capabilities. This enables educators to let students practice and learn with the program independently, and still obtain the information to review the work and guide students to the next step. 

We try to support educators where they are and help them understand how technology can be used to alter instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Once they begin seeing outcomes, they’re more comfortable stepping back and giving the student more independence.

How does building social skills affect a student’s experience in school—not just socially, but their ability to get an education and succeed?

We often don’t provide a curriculum for how to behave as an elementary or a middle school student. We just assume it. We expect you to observe, watch, and figure it out. That works for some kids, but not for all. 

In the educational system, we have an expectation that students will be able to interact with peers effectively. For example, we use a lot of group projects that require interaction to succeed. Yet we’re not teaching that.  

If we don’t teach social competence, it can lead to bullying, separation, poor learning outcomes, feelings of isolation, and other mental health concerns. Any of those outcomes then leads to poor performance in classes, absences, disengagement in the learning process, and ultimately poor educational outcomes.

How do those skills ultimately affect a student’s future beyond school?

These skills have consequences far beyond the classroom. We have a great deal of data showing that individuals with autism, and particularly those with lower support needs whose primary characteristic is social limitation, are undereducated, live at home as adults more, are underemployed, and are not in long-term relationships.

What role do you hope Voiss will play in the overall special education ecosystem, particularly in enhancing educators’ reach, efficacy, and professional experience?

My hope is that we’re further illustrating how learning can be independent and personalized. Teachers can determine what students need and what they need to adjust, and they don’t need to be experts on the content. They’re using a program they know is evidence-based, reliable, and has fidelity, and that they can have confidence will lead to improved outcomes for their students.