Over the spring semester of 2018, Dr. Ann Hill Duin and research assistant Sarah Canon have been working to develop an augmented reality (AR) toolkit for U of M students to use.
Augmented reality "allows the user to see the real world with virtual objects superimposed or composited with the real world. Therefore, AR supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it” (Azuma, 1997).
The pedagogical study investigated the impact of student development of Augmented Reality on content development, cultural understanding, and professional practice. With the objective being to enhance student understanding of coursework through development of augmented reality content, we were able to provide students with an augmented experience through five class deployments. These classes (along with their means of augmented creation) are listed below:
Writ 1301 -- used AR to “augment” posters
Writ 3029 -- used AR for résumés, professional identity
Writ 3577 -- used AR in blogs
Writ 3562 -- used AR with instructions, technical descriptions
Writ 4562 -- used AR with introductions for global virtual team members
In these classes, students used online easy-creation programs such as Zapworks to develop AR content for use in their current coursework. Students reported on their content development efforts and its effect on their understanding and future academic and/or professional work through online course forums or contributions to shared Google docs. Additional class discussion allowed us to identify main themes related to AR use.
Today, we concluded our final class deployment. We are eager to begin organizing our results and insights as we learn about the role of Augmented Reality on content development, cultural understanding, and professional practice through a student's perspective. Up to this point, we have been greatly encouraged by the excitement from both students and teachers to include AR into their classroom and professional experiences.
Thank you to all who participated! We will share further results soon.
References
Azuma, R. (1997). A survey of augmented reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 6(4), 355-385. http://ronaldazuma.com/
AR example Image: http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/vmware-2017/augmented-reality/1584/