AR Making eLearning Interactive and Extraordinary
Augmented Reality (AR) is taking the world by storm. It’s not only being used for games and entertainment, but it can also enhance your eLearning experience. The use of AR in eLearning will become more popular as it is used to make the eLearning process much easier and more engaging. It can be applied for anything from building models or animations, showing how something works before you buy them, enhancing exhibits at science museums by adding 3D images that interact within their world - pretty much any applications where visuals play an important role.
Augmented Reality (AR) is about combining digital information with our own environment. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), instead of "creating" a new learning experience it uses the existing surroundings. AR technology has proven to be one of the top innovations opening up new growth points for businesses around the world. Analysts predict that the AR market will reach $198 billion in 2025. This year, the number of mobile AR users is expected to reach 3.5 billion.
AR growth trends include mobile devices, healthcare, indoor and outdoor, shopping experiences, the automotive industry, and education. With the AR industry continuing to climb in market value, augmented reality’s potential cannot be denied. Importantly, it’s clear that AR’s influence extends far beyond just gaming. It now extends to many different industries as demonstrated by the following chart:
The key benefits of using AR in e-learning include:
The support of kinesthetic (tactile) learning
Collaborative learning
Distance/remote learning
Learner-centered learning
Creative learning.
Studies also reported that AR-enhanced students’ engagement, motivation, attention/focus, interactivity, verbal participation, concentration, knowledge retention, spatial abilities, as well as information accessibility. Read more on this here.
AR in education allows students to gain knowledge through rich visuals and immersion into the subject matter. Moreover, speech technology also engages students by providing comprehensive details about the topic in a voice format. In short, the concept of eLearning with AR targets a major information-gathering sense in humans. AR can replace textbooks, physical forms, posters, and printed brochures. This mode of mobile learning also reduces the cost of learning materials and makes it easy for everyone to access. It can also help in professional training. Imagine being able to cook food or operate a space shuttle without putting others in danger or spending millions of dollars.
The gamification of AR and the education system can make students' attitudes more positive. It makes learning interesting, fun, and effortless and improves collaboration and capabilities. Moreover, it provides vast opportunities to make classes less tiring by infusing unmatched interactivity through a computer-generated environment. eLearning involves students in an enhanced environment where they can see how concepts happen. For creating such applications, companies hire developers deft in AR development. With AR, classroom education can be extraordinary and more interactive, as AR can enable teachers to show virtual examples of concepts and add gaming elements to provide textbook material support. This will enable students to learn faster and memorize information.
Human memory doesn't forget visuals easily. Here are some examples of Augmented Reality in education:
An AR app, called "Dinosaur 4D+," with a set of flashcards enables users to view 3D dinosaurs, scanning through the card. With this, students can see the actions of dinosaurs and use app features to rotate, zoom, and more. Besides, the application also provides some information about each dinosaur.
The "Element 4D" AR app is another promising example of Augmented Reality in education, which makes learning chemistry fun. The application enables users to find the atomic weight, chemical elements, the reaction between two chemicals, and their names by simply putting two paper cubes for a special element block. Isn't it amazing?
Another admired example of AR/VR in education is Google Expeditions, which enables users to see 3D objects in the classroom, such as volcanoes, storms, and even DNA. This application provides more than 100 AR expeditions that include the history of technology, the moon landing, and more.
From the above examples, it is clear that AR in education can turn out to be a very exciting and useful intervention that will change the education system for at least the upcoming 100 years.
Industries like aerospace, aviation, hospitality, military, and others have to invest a huge amount of money and equipment in military training. With AR, the expenses can be reduced and can make training interactive. The concept of MR (virtual + existing reality) led by AR can enable astronauts to get real-life training and do tasks, like maintaining a space station. Sidekick is a NASA project that is testing Hololens to provide virtual illustrations and instructions to use in crew training. Altogether, its usage in military training is the main attraction, as it can help train soldiers to use equipment in a virtual environment. This is to refrain soldiers from putting themselves in danger and get trained with ease.
Now that students are having to learn from home, keeping students engaged in lectures has become very difficult. Thus, eLearning app owners are enthusiastically adopting AR technology. Altogether, Augmented Reality development is also boosting its prominence in the market. AR-enabled eLearning applications render the augmented object on the screen and play 3D examples of concepts that allow students to learn and engage. Altogether, computer graphics are also being used extensively, which enable an object to be captured and show up in the augmented environment and render searches about the object. It means the application can capture the image of objects from the real environment and provide a detailed description of the object. You can also create your own eLearning application enabled with AR with a unique concept. Read more here.
AR is beyond Pokemon Go and video games! There are benefits and challenges to AR in eLearning, but there is no argument that the use of AR in the technology industry is booming. From education, health industry, military, the list goes on and on. The ability to take eLearning from a boring single-tiered platform, to extraordinary and interactive is huge in helping students learn faster and recall information they have visualized.
Citations:
"Augmented Reality Trends: Future of AR Technologies" - mobidev.biz/blog
"Augmented Reality in Education: A Comprehensive Review" - MDPI (2076-3417/10/16/5660)
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