The motivation behind the work stems from a persistent problem in the growing field of VR rehabilitation: most existing tools are built by developers chasing immersion and visual spectacle rather than by clinicians pursuing therapeutic goals. The researchers point out that many VR systems for speech therapy are misaligned with established intervention frameworks, ignore receptive language skills such as auditory comprehension and semantic mapping, and often exclude speech and language therapists from the design process entirely. Where conventional therapy depends on a human therapist dynamically adjusting language complexity, emotional tone, pacing and prompting in real time, VR environments frequently replace this adaptability with rigid, scripted interactions that can increase cognitive load or social pressure for vulnerable children.

To close this gap, the team adopted a design-based research methodology, in which every iteration of the games was evaluated in real therapy sessions and refined according to observed speech frequency, emotional engagement, willingness to communicate, and signs of comfort or distress. The resulting user experience model rests on five pillars: simplicity of scenes and interactions, clarity of the virtual avatar’s prompts, comfort and safety, therapist control over the session, and continuous monitoring of outcomes through an integrated assessment framework. Crucially, the intervention was deliberately balanced across both expressive and receptive language domains, addressing a documented bias in VR research toward language production at the expense of comprehension.

Technically, the platform is a web-based VR serious game hub built with Node.js, Express.js, Socket.io and Three.js, delivering WebXR content over a secure HTTPS connection and storing session data in MongoDB. The conversational AI pipeline chains three components: browser-based speech-to-text through the Web Speech API, a locally hosted large language model, and Google Text-to-Speech for synthesis. When a child selects an object in the virtual scene and speaks, the system transcribes the utterance, generates a contextually appropriate response constrained by a strict therapeutic prompt, and speaks it back through a virtual avatar of the NAO robot, which acts as a visual mediator of communication and gives the child the sense of a genuine conversational partner. Measured end-to-end response latency averaged 692 milliseconds, fast enough to sustain natural turn-taking.

The six games, including Fruit Bingo, Animal Bingo, Hungry Dinos, The Amazing Seabed, Tell Me a Story and NAO’s Christmas, each target specific therapeutic objectives, from receptive vocabulary and single-keyword comprehension to narrative sequencing, morphosyntax and social-pragmatic confidence. Every parameter can be personalized by the therapist: the number and placement of objects, the timing of spoken instructions, voice gender and speech rate, spawn positions, reward content, and even which controller button a small child presses. In Fruit Bingo, for example, the NAO avatar names objects slowly and clearly, offers positive reinforcement for correct answers, and simply repeats the instruction without negative feedback when a child errs, keeping the experience low-pressure.

Safety received as much attention as engagement. Because VR manufacturers generally recommend headsets only for users aged twelve or older, the team built a structured supervised-usage protocol: dosage scaled by developmental stage, from five to ten minutes per session for five-to-seven-year-olds up to twenty minutes for eleven-to-thirteen-year-olds, at most two to three sessions per week. Environmental safeguards included seated interaction, limited virtual locomotion, reduced motion parallax, fixed horizon references and a stable frame rate above ninety frames per second to minimize sensory conflict. Sessions began with health screening, continued under continuous real-time adult supervision with the therapist watching a live stream of the headset view, and ended with post-session monitoring. The team even developed a child-friendly pictorial cybersickness scale using emoticons. Notably, no symptoms of cybersickness or dizziness were observed in any session.

The assessment framework itself operates at four analytical levels, from a single session’s micro-analysis of reaction times and accuracy, through daily group statistics and per-game longitudinal trends, to a global overview comparing all games and participants. A key proposed metric is speech-to-selection response time, the interval between a spoken instruction and the child’s successful selection of the target object, which the authors argue captures auditory comprehension, lexical-semantic processing, visual search and decision-making in a single psychometrically grounded measure. In parallel, fifty speech recordings were analyzed in Praat by a linguist and a speech and language therapist, who coded six parameters including phonological inaccuracy, morphosyntactic inaccuracy, emotional expression, naming and speech reaction time.

The statistical results, though preliminary, are striking. Friedman tests revealed significant differences across games for total speech duration, morphosyntactic inaccuracy, emotional expression and naming, with Bonferroni-adjusted post hoc comparisons confirming that naming durations were significantly longer in the Bingo games than in Tell Me a Story, consistent with their different communicative demands. The Amazing Seabed game produced the highest mean speech duration at nearly forty-seven seconds and the strongest emotional engagement, while average speech reaction times remained below one second in most games, indicating rapid turn-taking. The analyses suggest the games effectively capture and hold children’s attention, elicit high emotional expressiveness, and motivate communication, something children with communication disorders rarely display spontaneously.

Questionnaire data reinforced the picture. Children rated their experience on a three-point emoji scale and returned means between 2.8 and 3.0 on nearly every item, with perfect scores for enjoying the games, hearing and understanding the NAO robot, and absence of cybersickness. All participants said they wanted to play again, and most preferred VR to a tablet alternative. An interesting developmental split emerged: younger children interacted with controllers, while older participants favored hand gestures. The therapy students, rating the system on a five-point scale, gave an overall mean of 4.69, with the clarity of instructions earning a perfect five, and half of them singled out The Amazing Seabed as their favorite for its immersive realism.

The authors are careful to frame these findings as a feasibility study rather than proof of therapeutic efficacy. The sample of ten children was small and diagnostically heterogeneous, there was no control group, and no pre- and post-intervention comparisons, all of which limit generalizability. Larger samples, longitudinal designs and comparisons with typically developing peers are needed before the framework can claim clinical validity. Still, the study delivers something the field has lacked: a clinically grounded, safety-conscious, fully instrumented blueprint for bringing conversational AI into immersive therapy, one that treats the therapist not as a bystander but as the central controller of a personalized virtual treatment room. If the promising early signals hold, the humble speech therapy session may never look the same again.

Subject of Research: Design and evaluation of virtual reality serious games with conversational AI for speech and language therapy in children with language disorders

Article Title: Designing interactive VR scenarios for speech and language therapy with the assessment framework

Article References: Stefanov, T., Andreeva, A., Padareva-Ilieva, G., & Lekova, A. (2026). Designing interactive VR scenarios for speech and language therapy with the assessment framework. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 7, Article 1954543. https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2026.1954543

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frvir.2026.1954543

Keywords: virtual reality, speech and language therapy, serious games, conversational AI, large language models, language disorders, children, user experience, assessment framework, cybersickness, phonetic analysis, receptive language

The conceptual heart of the study lies in a distinction that has long divided educational theorists. Competencies, on one side, are complex, durable abilities that weave together theoretical knowledge, practical skill, and professional attitude, allowing an individual to act effectively across varied situations. Student outcomes, on the other, are narrower academic targets, such as mastering a specific technique or concept, typically measured at fixed points like the end of a course. The authors argue that conventional evaluation systems over-rely on exams and standardized tests, which verify short-term understanding but say little about whether a student can mobilize knowledge, skills, and attitudes in a complex professional setting. The result, they warn, is an educational culture that optimizes for quantifiable academic results at the expense of preparing people for evolving careers.

To ground their framework, the researchers turned to the world of international accreditation, comparing two complementary philosophies. ABET, the dominant accreditation body in the United States, emphasizes clearly defined, measurable student outcomes for each program, requiring robust evidence that graduates can apply scientific knowledge, design systems, and solve complex problems. The French Commission des Titres d’Ingénieur, or CTI, takes a competency-oriented view, stressing long-term abilities such as complex project management, multicultural teamwork, and the integration of ethical, economic, and environmental considerations. The authors are careful to note that neither framework is presented as a universal gold standard; other systems, including EUR-ACE, the Washington Accord, ABEEK in Korea, and CEAB in Canada, pursue similar goals. ABET and CTI were selected because the case-study program was simultaneously engaged in accreditation processes with both, making them a natural analytical pairing.

From this comparison emerged the concept the authors call student competencies, a unifying term meant to capture both immediate learning outcomes and the longer-term professional capabilities students must develop. Within the university’s College of Engineering and Architecture, six general competencies were defined for all engineering programs: scenario and problem solving; innovative design and experimental methods; team management and strategic leadership; adaptation, integration, and effective communication; principles of integrity and professional ethics; and self-learning and continuous development. These align with the seven student outcomes ABET prescribes for engineering programs while incorporating the transversal elements CTI requires. Each specific program then adds its own specialized competencies. For the Energetics and Renewable Energy Engineering program under study, three were defined: renewable energy, covering the design and maintenance of renewable systems; energy efficiency, focused on assessing and improving buildings; and energy management, encompassing the planning, monitoring, and control of energy flows.

The framework’s technical machinery is where it becomes genuinely distinctive. Every course component, from lectures and tutorials to laboratory work, projects, and internships, is mapped against each competency and assigned a weight of important, medium, or low, with the relationship one important unit equals two medium units equals three low units. Student grades, regardless of the assessment method that produced them, are converted to a scale level from one to five, where level five corresponds to a class average between 18 and 20 out of 20 and represents full competency acquisition. A weighted achievement rate is then calculated for each competency by averaging the weighted scale levels across all contributing teaching elements. The resulting rate classifies each competency into four categories: not acquired below 50 percent, initiation between 50 and 60 percent, operational between 60 and 80 percent, and advanced at 80 percent or above. A fifth level, expert, is deliberately reserved for graduates several years into their careers, to be confirmed through alumni feedback rather than classroom data.

Assessment itself is split into four complementary streams. Direct assessment measures competencies through exams, laboratory experiments, and oral presentations across the curriculum. Project-based assessment centers on a multidisciplinary, multi-constrained design project in the final year, evaluated not only for technical achievement but also for project management, teamwork, innovation, and adherence to constraints. Internship-based assessment examines the transfer of competencies to professional settings through three instruments: a detailed project report, an oral presentation before a jury that includes industrial supervisors, and an evaluation of actual work performance by the industry supervisor. Indirect assessment, finally, captures the perceptions of students, alumni, and industry partners through satisfaction surveys, providing an external check on whether the numbers reflect reality. The authors describe these four streams as complementary sources of evidence rather than competing methods, though they single out project and design-based assessment as the most integrative component when prioritization is needed.

The case study that validated the approach is substantial. The Energetics and Renewable Energy Engineering program is a five-year curriculum involving roughly 350 students and about 105 courses, with heavy emphasis on practical work. Students complete three industry internships, a one-month worker internship, a one-month technician internship, and a final-year placement of four to six months, alongside a mini-project in the third year and two design projects in the fourth and fifth years. The framework was implemented over three assessment cycles, during which quality committees measured competency acquisition, analyzed results, identified gaps, and fed the findings back into curriculum revisions. Project-based assessment evaluated 25 multidisciplinary student groups, typically of three members each, using a common evaluation grid, while internship-based assessment individually evaluated 45 final-year students on their reports, presentations, and workplace performance.

The results, according to the authors, demonstrate significant enhancement of competency acquisition across multiple dimensions and effectively bridge the gap between academic outcomes and industry expectations. Survey data from current students and alumni showed that all general competencies received positive ratings of 70 percent or higher, and the program subsequently obtained the international accreditations it was pursuing, which the authors present as practical confirmation of the framework’s relevance. Beyond the headline numbers, the layered analysis proved diagnostically useful: direct assessment revealed which competencies had low validation rates, prompting revisions to course syllabi, while project and internship data provided independent, more authentic corroboration of whether classroom learning survived contact with real engineering problems.

The authors are candid about the framework’s limitations. Coordinating four assessment streams demands sustained engagement from faculty and industrial supervisors, and questions remain about how to weight different learning modes and standardize evaluation criteria across multidisciplinary and multicultural contexts. Extending competency evaluation beyond graduation, and validating the approach in other engineering disciplines and institutional settings, are flagged as key directions for future research. The datasets underlying the study, which contain student results and institutional data, are not publicly available but can be requested from the corresponding author.

Even with those caveats, the significance of the work extends well beyond one Moroccan campus. As Industry 5.0 pushes human-centricity, resilience, and sustainability to the foreground, and as Education 5.0 models push universities toward learner-centered, AI-supported pedagogy, the pressure to prove that graduates are genuinely competent will only intensify. This study offers those institutions something rare in the accreditation literature: a fully specified, mathematically transparent method for turning grades, projects, internships, and stakeholder feedback into a single coherent picture of competency development, one that satisfied two of the world’s most demanding accreditation bodies at once. If it generalizes, the era of judging engineers by exams alone may finally be drawing to a close.

Subject of Research: An integrated assessment framework for competency-based engineering education aligning learning outcomes, project-based learning, and industry internships

Article Title: An integrated assessment framework for competency-based engineering education aligning learning outcomes, project-based learning, and industry internships

Article References: Barkaoui, A., Bettaibi, S., Ouldasine, R., Jamart-Gregoire, B., & Ezbakhe, A. (2026). An integrated assessment framework for competency-based engineering education aligning learning outcomes, project-based learning, and industry internships. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02069-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02069-6

Keywords: engineering education, competency-based education, assessment framework, project-based learning, internships, ABET accreditation, CTI accreditation, learning outcomes, quality assurance, renewable energy engineering, Industry 5.0, student competencies