The Kids Who Never Got to Practice: How VR Is Teaching Social Skills Schools Forgot to Teach

For decades, social skills training in schools meant one thing: a teacher singling out a student in front of their peers to practice something they don't yet know how to do. Dr. Amber Rowland spent over a decade building a better answer. VOISS — a virtual reality and simulation platform developed at the University of Kansas — gives students with autism and social-emotional learning needs a private, low-stakes space to practice the skills that determine whether they'll get a job, keep a relationship, and navigate the world. No audience. No humiliation. Just repetition, confidence, and data. In this episode, host Kevin McGinnis sits down with Dr. Rowland and co-founder Paul Epp to explore what happens when a decade of peer-reviewed research collides with the brutal realities of commercialization — ed-tech procurement cycles, university IP licensing, the race against a ticking tech-transfer clock, and the challenge of turning $11-in-savings-per-dollar outcomes into a business that can actually scale. This is a conversation about dignity, systems change, and what it really takes to get life-changing research out of the lab and into the hands of the kids who need it most.