Prospective students
Interested in virtual reality? Here you can learn about the work students have done in this area in the past, information on courses that involve VR offered at the University of Twente, and more.
Master theses
The University of Twente offers opportunities for students interested in making use of VR in their master thesis research. To get a taste of the possibilities, click the links below to read some of the the master theses that looked into or made use of VR in recent years:
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Treating Anxiety Disorders with VR-Based Exposure Therapy- A Scoping Review
Thesis by Andreas Markus Kammerer (2023).
The Evaluation of a VR Training Against Ethnic Profiling
Thesis by E.K. Mulder (2022).
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A Scoping Review into Treating and Assessing Aggression and Violence through Virtual Reality (VR)
Thesis by E. Reininghaus (2022).
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Thesis by C. J. Steklov (2022).
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Thesis by Leona Rudolph (2022).
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Thesis by Anna-Lena Stiewe (2022).
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Thesis by Lina BareišytÄ— (2021).
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VR courses
The University of Twente offers three courses that touch on VR.
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Training Sensors and Simulation
This challenge-driven course prepares students for the practical application of training methods and technology-driven research methods in safety-critical domains such as road traffic, air traffic control, cancer detection or surgery. In these areas, safety is highly dependent on human reliability, with the consequence that training and assessing operators is also a specific task for human factors specialists. During the course, students will become familiar with one core domain of Human Factors and their current research problems, for example the AI-supported analysis of medical image data, the optimization of simulator-based training for surgery, the design of virtual assistants, or the use of Virtual Reality for evaluating novel designs.
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Innovative Technology-Based Learning Environments
Nowadays, technology plays a major role in educational practice. In this course, students will be introduced to how technology-based learning environments need to be designed in order to enhance learners’ knowledge. Topics from the fields of psychology, educational sciences, and instructional technology will be discussed, including Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning, cognitive load theory, inquiry learning with computer simulations and virtual or remote labs, video instruction, gamification, and computer-supported collaborative learning.
This course applies a problem-based approach to learning, which means that it starts with students identifying problems in a modern classroom, and then use known theories and technologies as instruments to solve them.
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Working with Unity
Unity is a game-engine that is most commonly used to create the environments for the VR projects at CoDE. Here are some helpful resources and links for students interested in learning how to work with Unity.
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Downloading Unity
Unity offers a student plan that allows students enrolled at accredited educational institutions to download it for free. To download the Unity hub, where you can create and manage your projects, and apply for the student plan, click here.
Your first project
Unity offers over 750 hours of free tutorials and courses, suitable for beginners as well as more experienced users, through Unity Learn. A good place to start is with the microgame tutorials that can be found when clicking "new project" in the Unity hub. These tutorials will help you get familiar with the basic Unity mechanics.
If you want to add new elements to your game, such as different cars or avatars, visit the Asset store. Here you can find additional packages to add to your project.
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Another page that will be useful to you when learning how to use the Unity Editor and its associated services is the Unity User Manual. The manual can serve as a guide and reverence point throughout your journey with using Unity.
Driving simulator
The tool that is often used to create the roads for the UTwente driving simulator is called EasyRoads3D. There is a free version available to download here, so you can start getting experience with the tools that you might use if you are interested in working with the driving simulator.
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