Honours Thesis 

Course: PSYC 5000/5010 

Instructor: Farhad Dastur (director of KPU’s Virtual Reality Lab) 

One-sentence summary: 

Students propose a project idea, come up with a hypothesis, collect data using technology to make scenarios, and write a paper with results and conclusions that gets shared.  

Honours Thesis Project 

If a psychology honours student approaches Farhad, he invites them to become a member of the Virtual Reality lab. Students imagine a particular problem or concept, engage in a creative process to come up with a hypothesis, and refine their ideas against criteria to make a project that is feasible. Examples include themes around memory, nutrition, food literacy, or other concepts that students care about. The VR technology can be used to make scenarios that would be hard to replicate in the real world. Students collect data, struggle with getting participants, and wrestle with research ethics. Students need to learn effective time management, tackle equipment challenges, and integrate project management protocols. Some of these projects have been presented at national conferences.