Effective education with Immersive learning using augmented reality

Every parent would wish that their children/teenager would learn faster, more effectively and more efficiently. Every adult would want to spend the less time possible acquiring new information.

Augmented reality could address the following common problems:

Grasping new concepts

Some subjects involve abstract concepts that can be difficult to visualise. It is easier to see a atoms merge in chemistry, or a machine being taken apart in front of their desk. All these can be addressed using augmented reality.

We can build simple play cards that allows teenagers and children to visualise what happens when two atoms bonded together. This method allows users to clearly visualise something that is not as visible as shown in textbooks.

Demo play card video by VirQ Tech

Limited access to the knowledge

To allow students to learn about the human skeleton anatomy, we built an app that allows the users to place a 3D model of the human skeleton in the middle of the room on the table. It is messy and difficult to see a to-scale human skeleton in the room where you are present where you have to typically go to a museum or university for that.

Upon setting up the AR scene, a life size human skeleton will appear in the room. it is quickly obvious that a few bones of the skeleton are missing. The users are then to read about the skeleton anatomy and identify the missing skeleton pieces.

This allows users to get get a feel of the size of the skeleton in person right in front of them without having to setup the real thing in the space.

Engagement and Motivation

To obtain the different skeleton pieces, students have to read and understand details about the skeleton parts missing and go through a quiz session and insert number codes to unlock chest to obtain the missing pieces one by one. Each session when the game starts, the bones missing will be randomised so the user learns something new each and every time. AR has gamified the situation and allow the students to learn in a more fun, engaging environment where the information is absorbed deeply.

Simulated learning

Some hands-on experiences are expensive, dangerous or unavailable to the learning experience. Augmented reality allows training a rookie barista to operate the brewing machine to children learning about the growths of plants without the access to space and soil through detailed step by step pace.

In this next demo, we built an app that allowed children to plant and grow seeds without access to a plot of land. In this AR experience, children can find a location anywhere indoors and place a seedling there.

Similar to realistically planting a seed, the child will need to understand watering waters, and where to get water from a source. The gestures of lowering their hands while holding the water container simulates how the gestures of watering a plant really feels like. The children can plant as many plants as they want all around the house indoors.

The plants will also take actual time to grow. We did not insert the function to skip the growing process because we want to simulate the process of plant growth and teach children patience and the virtues of life and time. However, we also skip the entire growth period by fast forwarding the time taken to grow a plant instead from a few weeks to only 24 hours.

The child would wake up the next morning and found all the plants planted a day before has now bloom into beautiful coloured tulips. The child has now experienced a full plan cycle within indoors without going through the full time needed.

Summary

There are a lot more ways that augmented reality can be leveraged to a learning process. Soon with the advancement of wearable technology like AR glasses, we will see AR becoming more adopted in any industry especially in education and simulation. Upon reading, if you have faced any common problems in the education business that you think can be addressed with AR, do feel free to reach out to us via Whatsapp directly at +60166850069.