AUGMENTED REALITY IN EDUCATION
SWITCHING FROM AN ERA OF TRADITIONAL TEACHING
By overlapping the real world with an interactive digital layer, augmented reality has the power to free education from conventional, constrained models, in which a teacher, lecturer, or trainer delivers knowledge while students act as recipients only. AR changes the model to one in which teachers become facilitators and guides, accompanying students on shared journeys of interactive discovery.
Students of this generation absorb knowledge at a deeper level when they learn through interactive, multisensory experiences, instead of simply listening to somebody or reading textbooks. The beauty of augmented reality in education is that it can bring experiential learning into the classroom. For example, by transforming textbooks into 3D representations of learning topics, they also extend those experiences into the world outside the classroom.
Before we share a few examples of AR apps that are driving this transformation, it is important and reluctant to highlight the wider benefits of augmented reality in education, because enhancing the learning experience is only a part of the picture.
Benefits of Augmented Reality in Education
· Inexpensive Implementation
Another cost benefit comes from the simplicity of hardware requirements for augmented reality in education. Unlike virtual reality, AR rarely requires anything more than a smartphone or tablet, either of which can be inexpensive for educational organizations and institutions to purchase. Not to mention that many students have their own devices.
A recent survey by Pew Research Centre, for example, revealed that 95% of teenagers claim they own or have access to a smartphone. Today’s almost ubiquitous possession of smartphones facilitates flexibility in the choice of AR software deployment models. Institutions or educational bodies might choose to purchase hardware for student use, or pursue trendsetting policies and authorize students to download educational software onto their own device.
· Cost Efficiency
Augmented reality development can reduce the cost of education in a few ways. First, it can lower the costs associated with textbooks, by replacing them with apps or by reducing the amount of printed content they need to contain.
For example, a textbook requiring 200 pages for use in a conventional manner might need half the number when each serve as a marker for an AR app, which then delivers highlights of the textbook’s subject matter as interactive 3D overlays. Better still, it is less expensive to update the software content of an AR app than to have textbooks updated and reprinted periodically.
· Diverse Levels of Interactivity
AR technology can motivate students from all the domains — be the child introvert or extrovert, be him/her studious or a little towards the side of creativity. By bringing dry subjects to life, the vibrance brought to the essence of studies will give a sense of different hope to every student regardless their capabilities.
Whether it is a maths question rising from the page of an elementary-school mathematics textbook or a 3D wiring diagram unfolding from a technical manual, students can see objects in their learning environment more realistically, explore and manipulate them, and solve problems or examine case studies interactively. The interactivity afforded by AR helps people learn by doing, an experiential approach that is more conducive to knowledge retention than the use of eyes, ears, and memory alone.
Reshaping Educational Environments with Augmented Reality
One benefit not mentioned above, because it warrants a deeper focus from the perspective of where it comes into play, is the flexibility of educational AR.
After all, it is, in the main, a mobile technology, meaning students can take it and use it, anywhere. That’s why we are devoting the next few paragraphs to exploring how AR can be used in different educational environments — or even how it can transform any environment into one that contributes to students’ education.
Because AR is mobile technology, it obliterates educational boundaries and apart from bringing the outside world into the classroom it also works the other way around. Any student (adult or child) who owns a smartphone or tablet, will have the device close to him/her most of the time during this period of intense lockdown, so augmented reality is perfect for encouraging the completion of exercises for online training and education programs for adults.
Examples of augmented reality development for home-based education include interactive worksheets, which display quizzes, videos, maps, charts, 3D objects, audio presentations, and other media when seen through a student’s phone or tablet. Textbooks can also serve as anchors for multimedia home-study lessons that enable students to learn by doing.
With the implementation of AR technology, educators can take the classroom beyond the physical facility, beyond the home environment, and beyond any physical boundaries, keeping learning experiences continually at the fingertips of students wherever they are. While this will be a great way to enhance school field trips to museums, sites of interest, galleries, and the great outdoors, it can also benefit professional training, such as teaching engineers to work with certain machines or pieces of equipment for the first time.
The productivity advantage is evidenced by a 2019 Harvard Business Review article, which describes how the use of an instructional AR wiring overlay for wind-turbine technicians improved GE employees’ performance in wiring control boxes by 34%, compared with performing the task using the company’s conventional, non-AR process — and that was on the first attempt. From then onwards, AR has been seeing nothing but soaring high in sense of demands for various aspects of divisions in modern-day evaluation and merchandizing.
Advancements in the AR Educational Platform
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of AR products and solutions in use with educators right now. Aug That: The producers of the Aug That range of AR English, Math, and STEM courses really did their homework before developing their product. They based their efforts on research results indicating that augmented reality can help students improve test scores, regardless of whether their preferred learning style is visual, auditory, or sensory.
Currently, there are few pre-built courses using augmented reality as a foundation (as opposed to being just a feature), and Aug That is one of the best known and most celebrated of them. In addition to core education, Aug That also designs AR courses that expressly aid teachers educating students with special needs. Anatomy 4D: Amazingly, given its apparent value, Anatomy 4D from DAQRI was a free AR app aimed at college, university, and medical students.
Math Alive was for educating the youngest sets of children. Math Alive from Alive Studios will completely change the way they introduce pre-school and elementary students to basic math problems. Sold as fully comprehensive kits, Math Alive does not invoke the contentious issue of children using smartphones, as it runs on a laptop with a camera through which the students view special cards to see the AR effects.
The AfterAugment of Education
According to a report by an AR analytics firm, mobile augmented reality could attain a user-base of 1 billion by 2022. Given the growing popularity of AR in education, a good proportion of that user base could well comprise students, teachers, instructors, and other stakeholders in the education sector.
The tipping point could come with the arrival of wearable hardware to enable hands-free use of AR, making the technology — and the experience — more streamlined and seamless. Hence, it’s possible that in the near future, what began as a change in gaming and merchandizing industry, grew to become the big game-changer in 21st-century education as well.
To know more about what you can do in AR from the education point-of-view with us, head over to www.xperi.nz, or simply reach out to one of our social handles — FaceBook, Instagram, or more!
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