Background: Providing students with virtual role-play experiences has the potential to bring
counseling role-plays into large undergraduate courses. Objective: The purpose of this study
was to trial a virtual reality role-play experience where students played the role of a student
counsellor. Method: Seventy-three undergraduate psychology students played the role of a
student counsellor interacting with a virtual client in two role-plays, one via desktop and one
via head mounted display (HMD). Students provided feedback on their experience. Results …

… OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to trial a virtual reality role-play experience where
students played the role of a student counsellor. … In the present study we evaluated a
semi-scripted counselling role-play experience with a computer character with undergraduate
psychology students. We use the term semi-scripted to denote that while there was a dedicated
script, there was an element of choice for participants regarding how to respond at several points
in the dialogue. We also compared a desktop-based version with a …