The application of concepts to practical scenarios or real-life contexts (or vice versa) can often be a challenge within education. Augmented reality provides the opportunity to superimpose a diverse range of learning resources onto an environment which can help remove the barriers that prevent the integration of knowledge with reality.

Aurasma (now HP Reveal) is an online augmented reality application which allows students and tutors to bridge the gap between reality and taught concepts. The application is free and is compatible with most smart phones.

Senior Lecturer Mark Evans discusses the pedagogic potential of augmented reality within the video below.

Augmented reality can be used to combine a diverse range of virtual learning resources with real environments, therefore offering opportunities to apply learning within practical contexts, allowing students to relate concepts to relevant objects, situations or activities. The example discussed above demonstrates how augmented reality can also be used to offer learning choices via a range of media, providing opportunities to widen inclusivity by catering for a variety of learning modalities. As is suggested, augmented reality can also be used as a strategy for students to populate a learning environment with their own ideas and perspectives, making any learning space multidimensional with rich student contributions expressed via a range of preferred media, whether it be visual, textual or auditory. Student passivity is also reduced because the process of exploring augmented objects also requires active involvement and engagement, it therefore has a clear kinaesthetic element.

Benefits

Augmented Reality has the following potential pedagogic benefits:

• Provides a range of multimodal resources for learning
• Bridges the gap between learning and its application within an environment
• Generates a rich, multidimensional learning space
• Offers opportunities for collaboration that reveal a variety of learning perspectives
• Requires active engagement from learners

Resources and support

Click here to access a guide on Aurasma

Watch the video below to gain an understanding of how to use Aurasma (HP Reveal) for augmented reality.

https://youtu.be/63-ZF87RtoQ

Further support

If you need further support implementing this strategy, or you would like to know more, contact either the Senior Lecturer in Blended Learning, Lee Hazeldine (lee.hazeldine@canterbury.ac.uk), or the Learning Technologist, Sam McFarlane (sam.mcfarlane@canterbury.ac.uk) to arrange a discussion at your convenience.