Virtually the same? Examining perception and learning in immersive VR. Public Health & Sport Science PhD Studentship (QUEX Institute Funded)

The QUEX Institute studentships are available for January 2024 entry. This prestigious programme provides full tuition fees, stipend of £19,237 p.a, travel funds of up to £15,000, and RTSG of £10,715 over the life of the studentship. The studentship funding is provided for up to 42 months (3.5 years)

Join a world-leading, cross-continental research team

The University of Exeter and the University of Queensland are seeking exceptional students to join a world-leading, cross-continental research team tackling major challenges facing the world’s population in global sustainability and wellbeing as part of the QUEX Institute. The joint PhD programme provides a fantastic opportunity for the most talented doctoral students to work closely with world-class research groups and benefit from the combined expertise and facilities offered at the two institutions, with a lead supervisor within each university. This prestigious programme provides full tuition fees, stipend, travel funds and research training support grants to the successful applicants. The studentship provides funding for up to 42 months (3.5 years).

Eight generous, fully-funded studentships are available for the best applicants, four offered by the University of Exeter and four by the University of Queensland. This select group will spend at least one year at each University and will graduate with a joint degree from the University of Exeter and the University of Queensland.

Find out more about the PhD studentships Queensland partnership Working in partnership with the University of Queensland University of Exeter

Successful applicants will have a strong academic background and track record to undertake research projects based in one of the four themes of Healthy Living, Global Environmental Futures, Digital Worlds and Disruptive Technologies, and Mineral Security and Sustainability. 

The closing date for applications is midnight on Monday 3rd June 2024 (BST). The start date is expected to be September 2024.

Please note that of the eight Exeter led projects advertised, we expect that up to four studentships will be awarded to Exeter based students.

The following project in within the QUEX Institute interdisciplinary theme of: Digital Worlds and Disruptive Technologies.

Project Description

The increasing influence of digital worlds on the way we train and learn provides exciting possibilities for training and education that reaches further, is more equitable, and provides greater flexibility. Virtual and augmented reality (collectively ‘XR’) have already had a disruptive influence on the field of human skills training. For many industries, including medicine, defence, and aviation, XR now offers possibilities for training from any location, on equipment that does not yet exist, and to experience new and high risk environments. However, we are at a critical juncture where initial excitement around XR is being met with a realisation about the significant gap in our understanding of how XR impacts our brains and perceptual systems and therefore how we learn and behave in digital worlds. 

A particular consideration arises from the fact that XR is providing our brains with sensory information that is fundamentally different to the real-world. This disparity could have serious implications for use cases that depend on the development of precise perception-action couplings, such as training. VR and AR create a fully interactive virtual world for users through replacing the sensory (visual, auditory, and haptic) stimuli of the real-world with computer generated inputs. Compelling VR experiences depend upon misleading our sensory systems to create illusory perceptions of motion or three-dimensional space. But critically, it is unknown how this illusory sensory information will impact on 1) learning in VR, and 2) how learning will transfer out of VR when new sensory information becomes available again. 

These missing, altered, or uncertain sensory inputs in VR pose important research questions. Firstly, there are foundational scientific questions to be answered about how XR affects our perceptual system. Secondly, there are more applied questions about how XR can be used by industries for training and a need for these applications to be informed by our understanding of perception in XR.

The project team across UoE and UQ are already working with a range of industrial partners who are motivated to find answers to these questions. This PhD project will draw on the collective expertise in the team to address questions about the digital transformation of training. The work will be specifically applied to the field of aviation where there is a recent push towards XR techniques used as a replacement for traditional flight simulation.

This project will address the problem of how some of the unusual perceptual effects in XR impact learning. If perceptual distortions (e.g., altered perceptions of depth, reduced fields of view, rendering lags) alter the way skills are learned in XR, training applications across aviation, medicine, and physical rehabilitation could be ineffective or even detrimental.

The aims are to: i) establish whether action control in XR diverges from that of the real-world (studies 1a and 1b); ii) examine a common perceptual limitation of XR in aviation (limited fields of view; study 2) and whether such limitations impair transfer of training (study 3); and iii) develop better evidence-based guidance for the use of XR technologies in aviation (and beyond).  

Outputs: i) high quality publications on perception in XR; ii) development of better methods for measuring learning in XR with eye tracking (working with Tobii); iii) development of guidelines for the use of XR in aviation training (working with Boeing). 

Both UoE and UQ have state of the art XR, eye tracking, and human movement facilities to support this work. A key methodological approach will be eye tracking, using the project team’s particular expertise: Prof Wallis (UQ) is an expert in basic visual neuroscience and Prof Vine (UoE) has extensive experience of applied eye tracking.

For more information & to apply please click this link: Award details Funding and scholarships for students University of Exeter