Building Sustainable Social Communication Programs in Schools
Increasingly, educators and special education departments are being asked to support more students without increasing the number of qualified staff members. By using research-backed tools that allow educators to guide and supervise student play without requiring educator availability during every minute of play, special education departments can utilize human-centered technology to provide personalized social communication learning support for all students, despite these constraints.
Successful social communication programs require a combination of student-educator one-on-one time and time spent by the student learning at a guided pace that gives them time to internalize and absorb the skills. They provide measurement tools, trackable progress reports, and generalization content that educators can use in an intuitive format.
Our research team developed VOISS while working with more than 3,000 students and 300 teachers to develop an evidence-based system during more than a decade of research at the #1-ranked public special education program in the country, the University of Kansas. Now for the first time, VOISS is available to any institution, practitioner, or parent across the country, while our research team continuously finds ways to help educators deliver better social skills instruction for the benefit of their students.
The Building Blocks of a Program that Scales
A sustainable social communication program tends to include:
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Independent, asynchronous practice: Students build skills on their own schedule, on the devices they already have, without a practitioner in the room for every session
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Structured, point-in-time assessment: A clear read on each student’s starting point
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Ongoing progress monitoring: Visibility into whether skills are developing, tied to IEP goals and documentation, so adjustments happen before a student falls behind
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A generalization path: A deliberate bridge from practicing a skill in a simulated setting to using it in the classroom, hallway, or at home
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Workflow fit: Support that integrates into what staff are already doing (MTSS frameworks, existing caseload routines) rather than requiring a separate system
The Future of Social Communication Instruction through Technology
Sean Smith explores how technology can better support struggling learners and students with disabilities, particularly in developing the social skills that shape success in school and beyond. Drawing on decades of research, he shares how VOISS uses realistic virtual environments, independent practice, and built-in progress reporting to personalize learning while giving educators more capacity to respond to individual student needs.
How VOISS Supports
VOISS was built to serve in this environment. It answers questions such as how do schools expand access to individualized social skills support without expanding staff? How can we provide students with a way to practice social skills in a lifelike environment that does not carry social risk?
With VOISS, students practice independently across devices, including tablets, computers, and VR headsets. The Admin Module supports educators by providing assessment, progress monitoring, and documentation support. This enables programs to scale to the size of a caseload or district rather than being restricted by a single practitioner's schedule.
Read Our Co-Founders’ Perspectives:
Making Social Skills Instruction Scale
Amber Rowland explains why traditional social skills instruction can be difficult to scale and how VOISS was designed to address those constraints. Drawing on 13 years of research, she shares how extended reality, 180 targeted social skills, and coordinated progress tracking can help students practice independently while giving educators more capacity to support them.
Why “Evidence-Based” Isn’t Just a Buzzword
Dr. Maggie Mosher explains what qualifies social skills instruction as evidence-based, why that standard matters for students with disabilities, and how VOISS combines research-backed practices with extended reality and AI to deliver effective instruction at scale.
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VOISS provides students with interactive scenarios that cover 181 unique social skills, offering unprecedented social skill instruction for middle school students with autism and learning disabilities.
VOISS's design has been directly shaped by the people who use it: Researchers interviewed middle school teachers and students with autism spectrum disorder to understand what they want from a VR learning environment, rather than building features based on assumptions. (Carreon, Rowland, Smith, Lowery, Mosher, 2025)
What the Research Says about Scaling Social Skills Instruction
VOISS Advisor provides teachers, parents, and practitioners with supports to help students generalize learned social skills into the real world.
Backed by over 15 years of research from the University of Kansas, VOISS provides evidence-based instruction and practice for students and tools for teachers.
VOISS has been shown to work across device types — a study comparing a fully immersive, headset-based version against a screen-based version with middle schoolers with autism found both produced significant learning gains. This provides flexibility for schools working with limited budgets or device access. (Rowland & Mosher, 2023)