Home Page

AR in Education and Learning

The advances in the computers as well as in computer vision research during the last years facilitated the study of augmented reality (AR) prototype systems for education and learning. AR is a set of technologies that operate in conjuction with the aim of merging virtual information with the real environment.

The aim of the AREL project is to provide information on how AR could be applied into education and learning. To achieve this, a variety of application domains have been explored including archaeology , geography , gaming , music and higher education . AREL combines all the findings from these prototype systems since 2001 in order to aid traditional methods currently used in classroom situations (i.e. university teaching) or in self-learning scenarios (i.e. museum visitor).

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this research is to provide a generic high-level AR framework that can be used to design and implement a number of different educational and learning applications. The objectives of AREL is to provide a common framework that demonstrates how various innovative educational and/or learning applications could be used in the future in real-life. Each application (i.e. archaeology, geography, gaming, music and higher education) has a different mode of operation which is based on customisable scenarios. The learner selects presentation mode between cyber, virtual and augmented reality environments.

Technological Challenges

It is important to consider the technological challenges that exist when introducing AR for educational and learning purposes. A robust educational or learning AR system must have the following characteristics:

• Be simple to use and robust as a tool
• Provide the user with clear and concise information
• Enable the educator/tutor to input information in a simple and effective manner
• Enable easy interaction between learners
• Make complex procedures transparent to the learner
• Be cost effective and easy to install

Individual persons have different learning styles and different ways of communication but AR technology seems to be able to promote education and learning in a number of different ways.