Augmented Reality in Education

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that incorporates digital information such as text, image, video and audio into real-world setting. Apart from sports, business and entertainment the use of AR applications is becoming increasingly popular in the settings of education.

Numerous studies have found that VR has great potential to enhance teaching and learning (Akcayir & Akcayir, 2017). For example, the use of AR increases learners’ participation and motivation by providing 3D visual objects embedded in leaning materials (Taskiran, 2019). The most significant advantage of AR is the immersive learning environments it creates to support teaching of difficult, expensive or highly complex experiments which are unlikely to be conducted in the laboratories (Akcayir & Akcayir, 2017). For instance, abstract concept, the mealworm respiration experiment in biology classes (Puhek & Debevc, 2011). Enhancing interaction and collaboration among students and/or between students and teacher by providing collaborative task is anther advantage of using AR applications (Taskiran, 2019).

However, there are significant challenges of using AR successfully in educational settings. The most common barriers are usability issues and frequent technical problems (Akcayir & Akcayir, 2017). As Bower et al. (2014) suggest that teachers are often not well equipped or trained for the successful use of AR in classroom. Even some teachers implement AR in their discipline areas it is often superficial and unproductive because of lack of conceptual framework (Bower et al., 2014).  In other words, the prerequisite of using a certain technology depends upon whether or not it can support specific pedagogical strategies according to the learning outcomes.

In most cases AR is only used to support understanding and application which results in developing only lower order thinking skills (Bower et al., 2014). In order to overcome this issue teacher can have students become designers using AR applications (Bower et al., 2014). A good example of learning by design is the product in which photos/pictures displayed on the wall of a gallery we watched in our tutor David’s class. After watching I thought it could also be applied in language classroom. Students can work in team to design a gallery exhibition based on the topics learnt in class. The title and caption of the photo/picture is in target language. When focusing on a photo/picture and entering in the scene can be two people talking in target language or the scene is silent which requires the audiences to explain in target language. There are a lot of room for creativity here. But at the moment I am not confident to deliver such a lesson because I myself have not got enough experiences with AR applications. This is the thing I plan to do in this winter holiday.

References

Akçayır, M., & Akçayır, G. (2017). Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: A systematic review of the literature. Educational Research Review, 20, 1-11.

Bower, M., Howe, C., McCredie, N., Robinson, A., & Grover, D. (2014). Augmented Reality in education–cases, places and potentials. Educational Media International, 51(1), 1-15.

Puhek, M., & Debevc, M. DEVELOPMENT OF AUGMENTED REALITY LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS IN BIOLOGY CLASSES.

Taskiran, A. (2019). The effect of augmented reality games on English as foreign language motivation. E-Learning and Digital Media, 16(2), 122-135.