Driving XR Education at Inholland with Partners

immersive techweek

About a year ago and through grassroots initiatives, the Creative Business domain (CRB) embarked on a mission to integrate Immersive and Extended Reality (XR) media and technologies within their education. Shant Bayramian, who was then a lecturer in the Creative Business program, initiated the XR Production Lab with the sponsorship of the EdTech team of Inholland– a one week program where students develop XR products for societal aims. You can read more about it here. 

Over the coming months after such an initiative, we established an educational partnership with the Immersive Tech Week Rotterdam, one of the largest Extended Reality (XR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) events in Europe which was also mentioned on IRIS here (in English and Dutch). 

Fast forward to a couple of months and we are moving closer to our strategic aims: building connections with the industry, scaling up the XR educational offering, and conducting applied research with and about XR. More generally speaking, we truly believe in educating the creative business leaders of the future on the sustainable and ethical usage, development, and implementation of emerging technologies and media. Our partnership with the Immersive Tech Week presented a chance to accelerate the above mentioned goals. We were able to represent Inholland UoAS and the various programs within the Creative

Business domain at ITW by participating with a hundred students; ten lecturers, researchers, and other staff members; six student presentations from the XR Production Lab; and student participation in the cross-institutional and national hackathon (in which the group our students were in managed to win second place). We are proud of all our colleagues and students who participated and partook in the Immersive Tech Week. We have fostered new relationships with the industry and other educational institutions and we aim to bring the knowledge and experience obtained from the inspiring event back to our Inholland community to shape the future of XR and emerging technologies adequately. 

Let’s continue to accelerate XR education within our UoAS by empowering colleagues and students, sharing knowledge, and staying inspired! In the academic year of 2025-2026, the CRB domain will be launching an “Emerging Technologies” minor which will offer a larger and more structural XR educational offering. Please contact shant.bayramian@inholland.nl for more information. 

We would like to thank all the programs, colleagues, students, enablers, and partners who helped realize this educational partnership, and more generally, the integration of XR into CRB’s educational programs and research center: VRDays Foundation, Rotterdam UoAS, SURF, and the EdTech Team at Inholland UoAS. 

Thank you to Jonathan Dobbelaar, a third year Creative Business student in Rotterdam, for filming and editing the after movie. 
If you would be interested in collaborating in the field of XR and/or AI, please contact Shant Bayramian.