Understanding and Designing the Metaverse (Bachelor/Master | Wintersemester)

Vorlesungsbeschreibung (in Englisch):

Since the science-fiction author Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his novel Snow Crash, a portmanteau of “meta” (Greek for beyond) and “universe”, people have been dreaming of realizing his vision of a virtual reality-based three-dimensional (3D) successor to the Internet, in which people interact with each other, virtual agents and objects in the form of avatars. This virtual universe is envisioned to exist in parallel to reality, has its own economy, culture, organizations, rules, and laws, and, similar to the Internet, is considered to be an open, distributed, and collectively created space where anyone can become a content creator and can shape this collectively created virtual world.

Driven by recent cultural and societal developments − such as the increasing popularity of digital games and the acceptance of remote collaboration − as well as technological advances − such as AR and VR, 5G, blockchain technologies, cloud computing, streaming technologies, or artificial intelligence − various big technology companies have started developing platforms from which a potential metaverse could emerge soon. Metaverse-like platforms such as Roblox, Fortnite Creative, The Sandbox, VRChat, Meta Horizon Worlds, and Minecraft are already attracting millions of users to design and jointly experience virtual worlds.

In this project seminar, students explore how the metaverse may shape the future of research, education, business, healthcare, and society as well as what current and future challenges the topic entails. Students study the ongoing scientific discourse on the topic and strive to understand what socio-technological trends may support the further development of the metaverse. To this end, the students create immersive 3D content on popular and emerging metaverse-like platforms and investigate relevant research questions related to the topic in empirical studies. The project is positioned at the intersection of Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction and strives to create knowledge by implementing and evaluating prototypes, interactive experiments, and case studies.

This project seminar applies a research-based learning approach, in which students learn how to read and understand scientific papers, develop, and evaluate hypotheses by using scientific methods, and think critically and creatively. Students learn how to solve scientific problems, challenges, and dilemmas. Further, the course trains skills for communicating in the field of science through writing and discussion and thus prepares writing a bachelor or master thesis.

Structure

Structure: The workload for this module is roughly broken down as follows:

• Participation in Sessions
  Engage in sessions covering the fundamentals of the Metaverse phenomenon, along with its theoretical and methodological foundations.

• Self-Study & Paper Presentations
  Independently or collaboratively prepare and deliver presentations on selected topics, based on academic literature or project-relevant themes.

• Creation of Immersive 3D Content
  Design and develop immersive experiences using popular and emerging Metaverse-like platforms.

• Research Study & Data Analysis
  Plan and conduct an empirical research study as a group project, including the collection and analysis of relevant data.

• Term Paper Preparation
  Compile insights and findings into a structured academic term paper that reflects your research process and results.

Prerequisites

Profound English skills are required. Further, creativity, experience in software design, user experience, prototyping, and software engineering (e.g. Unity3D, Roblox, Godot) are very helpful.

All participating students should be motivated to work in an international and interdisciplinary group on a challenging topic.

We recommend participating in our bachelor course Immersive Information Systems or the master course Designing Gamified Systems, as both provide valuable foundational knowledge.

Most of our projects require knowledge of software development. Willingnes to code is a prerequisite to participate in this course.

Topics

In the winter semester of 2025 will be announced in the first lecture. Please attend the first session!

Method of examination

Seminar paper and presentation

Tutorials and Open Lab Sessions

The sessions are accompanied by tutorials where students learn the basics of developing games (e.g. in Unity3D or Roblox), as well as discuss current challenges in the implementation of their projects.

Our students can work in our Lab with latest gaming hardware, VR and AR devices.

Lecturer

Prof. Dr. Benedikt Morschheuser

Tutors

Runjie Xie & Jonathan Stief(Roblox development)

Course details

Block lectures + Group work + Seminar Project

Dates

Announced in VC

Registration

Registration for the course via FlexNow.
XX-XX.XX.2025

Additional information

This course is open to both bachelor’s and master’s students. Bachelor’s students may count it as a practical WI-Project, while master’s students can take it as a research project (6 ECTS / 180h).

If you are interested in this course, please register via VC! If your enrollment was successful, you can attend. Please be sure to attend the first session of the semester. You will receive the enrollment information for the corresponding VC course there.

More details on the seminar, materials, technical requirements, and other information will be announced in VC.

Keywords: Metaverse, Interactive Information Systems, HCI, Web3, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Gamification, Games

UnivIS