The authors have previously presented a methodology to guide the development of virtual learning environments (VLEs) for use by people with learning disabilities (Brown, Neale, Cobb, & Reynolds 1999). This paper presents the results of two sets of studies and shows how these studies enhance this methodology. The first set of studies are user-centered designs for VLE to teach horticultural-related employment, leisure, travel, and public presentation skills to young people with learning disabilities. These projects have allowed us for the first time to distill a set of design guidelines for the production of VLEs for use by people with a learning disability. The second set of studies aims to determine the tutoring strategies employed by support workers, teachers, and care providers when supporting people with learning disabilities using VLEs. These strategies will be embedded in the VLEs to further scaffold the learning process of our target users and allow us to expand the guidance given within the implementation component of the development methodology. These enhancements of the existing methodology are clearly developed within the paper and illustrated diagrammatically.

During the past 2 years, the way in which industry views virtual reality (VR) has changed. Previously, only a few large companies were assessing virtual environments either as “internal marketing exercises” or through demonstration worlds built for them by outside consultants or universities; most other industrialists may have seen VR as only having entertainment applications. Now there is some evidence that parts of industry, and manufacturing industry in particular, see VR as an increasingly affordable technology with potentially wide-ranging applications. This paper briefly describes a recent U.K. research program MOVE (Manufacturing Operations in Virtual Environments) consisting of an industrial VR user survey and demonstration applications built to allow potential users to make informed assessments of virtual environments. Two particular applications—training for maintenance and rapid prototyping for product design—are described in greater detail as examples of industrially relevant environments, before an assessment is provided of potential VR application in manufacturing.