Bowling Green State University uses virtual audiences to help students rehearse speeches in COMM 1020, Introduction to Public Speaking. Jaclyn Marsh, an assistant teaching professor and the course director in the School of Media and Communication, introduced the practice into her teaching. Students were using it during the spring 2026 semester, although the launch date is not reported. The university's faculty profile also identifies Marsh's work integrating VR into its public-speaking curriculum.
Students wear Meta Quest 3 headsets and use Ovation to address simulated audiences that can become distracted or ask questions. The software provides transcripts and feedback on delivery, including pace and filler words. Marsh combines individual practice with a class debrief. BGSU reports a fleet of 25 headsets, with 20 usable simultaneously in a class; these figures describe equipment and capacity, rather than total participants.
Student Carter Louis Sindelar reported that rehearsal helped him slow his speech and feel more confident. Marsh observed reduced anxiety inside the headset, while students could still feel nervous before addressing their real classmates. These are qualitative observations, with no controlled or numerical learning-effectiveness results reported. Ovation's own website lists BGSU among its users and documents the headset application.
