New digital technologies offer many exciting opportunities to educators who are looking to develop better teaching practices. When technologies are still new, however, ideas for their implementation often outstrip research on how to employ such technologies effectively. This book is intended to provide teachers and researchers with a wide range of ideas from researchers working to integrate the new technology of Augmented Reality into educational settings and processes. It is hoped that the research and theory presented here can support both teachers and researchers in future work with this exciting new technology.
1 What Is AR?
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays virtual objects (augmented components) onto digital representations of the real world. These virtual objects then appear to coexist in the same space as real-world objects. Augmented reality has the potential to transform how we interact with almost every industry today, and it will be equally transformative both from a consumer and an enterprise perspective. It’s already transforming sectors like real estate, healthcare and education. As the chapters of this book will show, AR is already being used with learners of all ages, from pre-school through medical school, and in many educational settings outside schools, as well.
2 What Is the Place for AR in Education?
When AR technology is used in educational settings, it
helps students to engage in authentic explorations in the real world
facilitates the observation of events that cannot easily be observed with the naked eye by displaying virtual elements alongside real objects.
increases students’ motivation and helps them to acquire better investigation skills
creates immersive hybrid learning environments that combine digital and physical objects, thereby facilitating the development of processing skills (e.g., critical thinking, problem solving, and communicating through interdependent collaborative exercises.)
3 What Is the Purpose of This Book?
To date, research into the educational effects and implications of AR technology is in its early stages. Therefore, this book will discuss the advantages and challenges of AR technology used in educational settings using empirical data and will suggest ideas for effective pedagogical practices and areas in which to invest future research and development, so that this technology may be employed to its maximum capacity for supporting formal and informal learning as well as workplace training.
4 The Organization of the Book
The book begins with a section on AR in early education – pre-primary, primary, up to early secondary (we include a chapter on material aimed at 9–15 year olds). It then moves on to a section about AR in more advanced education, from high school onwards. The final section discusses a range of theories and applications that are more general, covering all age groups, and also that may belong outside formal educational settings, for example discussing museum use of AR, which provides informal educational opportunities for people of all ages.
5 Early Education
The section about Early Education begins with a chapter by Eva Severini, Blanka Kožík Lehotayová and Eva Csandová that focuses on possible educational uses of augmented reality to promote digital literacy development in primary school preparation. The goals of this chapter are to identify the impact and benefits of augmented reality on the development of children’s digital literacy in kindergarten. The research was conducted in a natural didactic context using direct and indirect observation of children in primary school preparation class during the usage of augmented reality within the educational activities and a focus group with teachers in the learning group. The authors interviewed the participants and analysed the obtained data using an open encoding method to identify teachers’ views and preconceptions about the augmented reality usage on their didactic practice. Their data provide insight in the impact and benefits of augmented reality usage on the digital literacy development of children.
Chapter 2, by Kateřina Jančaříková and Eva Severini, focuses on the potential impact of augmented reality on the development of scientific literacy in pre-primary students as well as on the teachers’ professional development. The chapter discusses the opportunities that augmented reality brings to the development of scientific literacy and gives an overview of selected applications suitable for preschool children. The authors, focus on two applications, namely, the 4D animal and Quiver Vision that were used in a research project involving two Czech and two Slovak kindergartens as well as preschool children’s parents. The research showed that many teachers were not familiar with the technology of augmented reality, and some teachers expressed worries about how to employ augmented reality in preschool. Additionally, the teachers shared creative ideas on how these technologies can be included in the offered activities.
Chapter 3, by Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris, Constadina Charalambous, Katerina Mavrou, Christos Dimopoulos, Panayiota Anastasi, Ilona-Elefteryja Lasica, Nayia Stylianidou, and Christina Vasou discusses The Living Book – Augmenting Reading for Life (Erasmus+) project. The project aims to: (1) address the under-achievement of European students in reading by developing an innovative approach that combines offline activities that promote reading literacy with online experiences of books’ ‘virtual augmentation’; and (2) strengthen teachers’ competences when adopting the Living Book approach and dealing with diverse groups of learners. The chapter outlines the theoretical premises of Living Book and provides an overview of the theoretical framework underlying the design of the ‘Augmented Teacher’ professional development course and the content and structure of the course.
The fourth chapter, by Eva Csandová, Renata Tothova and Lilla Korenova, focuses on the possibilities of educational uses of augmented reality in Slovak primary school. This chapter identifies the impact of the use of augmented reality in education activities, including benefits on the children’s digital literacy development, as well as emerging problems or difficulties for children while using augmented reality applications. The main finding of this chapter was an increase of children’s inner motivation for learning that subsequently and in close liaison increases also the inner motivation of teachers for further professional development and self-education.
Chapter 5, by Lilla Korenova, Zsolt Lavicza and Ibolya Veress-Bágyi, discusses the possibilities of using mobile apps with augmented reality in pre-primary education. The authors introduce some of the most popular and widely used applications for kindergarten-age students that use the camera of mobile phones or tablets to explore 3D objects. They also discuss how these applications offer an immersive experience and edutainment and the alpha generation classrooms could be enhanced and transformed by the implementation of AR technologies.
6 Advanced Education
The sixth chapter by Gilles Aldon and Corinne Raffin, presents a research study conducted in a dual space comprising a secondary school, and a 3D, virtual-world analogue of the school in which students and teachers act through evolving avatars. It describes a research study that examines an augmented reality secondary school, especially its educational uses and conditions necessary for its successful development and adoption. It assesses the pedagogic contributions of an immersive space, and the development of new pedagogical strategies. The authors also discuss how the main part of this evaluation focuses on the impact of this tool on the pupils’ working methods, on their acquisition of competences and knowledge, and on their relationships with mathematical objects through augmented reality embedded in the virtual world.
Chapter 7, by Osama Swidan, Florian Schacht, Cristina Sabena, Michael Fried, Jihad El-Sana and Ferdinando Arzarello, considers the application of augmented reality technology for developing covariational reasoning with an aim to show general potentialities of AR technology and give some hint of the theoretical principles behind them. The chapter discusses the first design--cycle from a design-based research study that aims at both the development of an AR toolkit within iterative research cycles, and at its scientific investigation. The main claim of the authors is that engaging students in coordinating continuous real phenomenon (e.g., a moving object along inclined plane) with its mathematical representations (e.g., plotting points of graph, ordered pairs in a table of values) through visual-kinesthetic activities, may help the students to experience the multiple levels of sophistication and develop multiple meanings of the covariational reasoning. Insights from the first design cycle are presented and ideas for next design-cycles are also discussed.
Chapter 8, by Mária Fuchsová, Miriam Adamková and Miroslava Pirháčová Lapšanská, discusses the use of AR in the context of Biology education as one of the STEM areas. It focuses on investigating pre-service primary teachers’ perceptions when integrating AR technology in Biology classrooms and on the elements, that influence the use of AR in educational processes and teaching practice at the undergraduate level. The authors recommend future studies that would stress the socio-cultural aspect of using AR and several already existing Biology-themed AR applications that seem to be interesting, enhancing and beneficial in the context of Biology education at different levels.
Chapter 9, by Martina Siposova and Tomas Hlava, discusses the integration of augmented reality (AR) in teaching and learning for tertiary education. It analyses selected and relevant research studies published in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journal database, Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC) journal database and Open Access Journals on AR in tertiary education. The authors comment that it seems that the range of scholarly articles and studies aimed at examining the AR potential at university level education does not fully cover the variety of academic fields.
Chapter 10, by Utku Köse and Omer Deperlioglu introduces an Augmented Reality-based platform for improving efficiency and effectiveness of medical training by providing simulation-based solutions that enable students to interact with real-world objects to perform their tasks on medical diagnosis or operations based tasks that would help them to understand more about some diseases. The authors describe the platform developed that encompasses augmented reality and Artificial Intelligence to support an intelligent diagnosis function, using signal processing or Machine Learning infrastructure based on widely used Artificial Neural Networks. They also discuss the evaluation of the platform’s accuracy on diagnosis and effectiveness for training processes and positive results were achieved according to the obtained findings.
The eleventh chapter, by Martina Babinská, Monika Dillingerová and Lilla Korenova, focuses on the implementation of the Augmented reality application named ‘Augmented Polyhedrons – Mirage 2.2’ (APM) into the teacher-training programme. The chapter discusses the results of the conducted research that supports the suitability of the selected application and explains how the researchers create the implementation method of the APM application for teachers’ training programme mathematical courses. The last part of the chapter offers a view of secondary school mathematical problems which could be supported in teaching by AR applications. The authors associate mathematical problems with specific existing applications, and suggest new AR applications that could possibly be developed and integrated in professional development programs.
7 All Ages and outside the School
Chapter 12, by Ilona-Elefteryja Lasica, Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris, Efstathios Mavrotheris, Stavros Pitsikalis, Konstantinos Katzis, Christos Dimopoulos and Christos Tiniakos, introduces the project named Enlivened Laboratories in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (EL-STEM), which aims to integrate these technologies into school laboratories, for attracting secondary school students who might not be interested in STEM-related studies/careers, enhancing the interest of those who have already chosen this field of studies/careers, encouraging student STEM engagement and improving student performance in STEM-related courses. The chapter provides an overview of the EL-STEM project and describes use cases of Augmented Reality in STEM education.
Chapter 13, by Chronis Kynigos, Zacharoula Smyrnaiou, and Marianthi Grizioti, discusses pedagogical design principles of augmented reality games, including young peoples’ invocation of meanings and intuitions as they engage in collaborative play. The chapter describes a research study that shows how students engaged in physical movement as part of game play, and then generated scientific language to explain their strategies. It also discusses the potential of designing games for students to purposefully question their intuitions.
The fourteenth chapter, by Melanie Tomaschko and Markus Hohenwarter, presents possibilities for exploiting the potential of augmented reality in learning and teaching mathematics. It elaborates on the novel mobile application GeoGebra Augmented Reality (AR) for iPhones and iPads and describes how GeoGebra AR allows exploration of 3D math objects virtually placed in learners’ environments, while they can walk around them and observe them from different perspectives. Moreover, this chapter discusses guided activities that allow students of all ages to discover math in the real world and suggestions for possible future development of the GeoGebra AR app.
Chapter 15, by Francisco Botana, Zoltán Kovács, Álvaro Martínez-Sevilla and Tomás Recio, describes a scenario in which automated reasoning and augmented reality are merged for educational purposes. It further explains the idea of Automatically Augmented Reality (AAR) and its potential application to the development of mathematical competencies for real life and for the didactical utilization of Mathematical Walks, a pedagogical activity that uses GeoGebra as an auxiliary tool. Once the visual representation of reality has been turned into a precise GeoGebra input, it discusses the automatic discovery of the existing mathematics lying behind this geometric version of reality by automatically and systematically deploying GeoGebra reasoning tools over the input, the implementation of the Automated Geometer module in GeoGebra and the educational changes, advantages and dangers that could follow the implementation and popularization of an AAR scenario.
Chapter 16, by Georgios Papaioannou, reviews augmented reality applications for cultural heritage settings, particularly museums. It presents the history and the evolution of augmented reality programmes and applications in museums and cultural heritage institutions. It further examines examples of good and poor practices and discusses issues related to the use of augmented reality in museum environments and within museum educational programmes.
The seventeenth chapter, by Lilla Korenova, Maria Kožuchová, Jiří Dostál and Zsolt Lavicza, highlights the possibilities of using extended and augmented reality applications in technical education for the preparation of future teachers who teach pupils aged 6–14 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Chapter 18, by Robert Bohdal, discusses the most commonly used VR/AR devices and how they work so that a reader without technical education can understand their functionality and at the same time get an overview of the many devices that are used.
We hope that an audience of professionals and researchers working in the field of Education can gain insights to support educators, practitioners, undergraduate and postgraduate students and curriculum developers who concerned with integrating integrate augmented reality in educational settings (Primary Education, Secondary Education, Tertiary Education and training in a workplace) and prepare citizens to be ready to work and meet the new workforce needs of the 21st century.