Revealing the true potential and prospects of augmented reality in education

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) technology is one of the latest developments and is receiving ever-increasing attention. Many researches are conducted on an international scale in order to study the effectiveness of its use in education. The purpose of this work was to record the characteristics of AR applications, in order to determine the extent to which they can be used effectively for educational purposes and reveal valuable insights. A Systematic Bibliographic Review was carried out on 73 articles. The structure of the paper followed the PRISMA review protocol. Eight questions were formulated and examined in order to gather information about the characteristics of the applications. From 2016 to 2020 the publications studying AR applications were doubled. The majority of them targeted university students, while a very limited number included special education. Physics class and foreign language learning were the ones most often chosen as the field to develop an app. Most of the applications (68.49%) were designed using marker detection technology for the Android operating system (45.21%) and were created with Unity (47.95%) and Vuforia (42.47%) tools. The majority of researches evaluated the effectiveness of the application in a subjective way, using custom-made not valid and reliable tools making the results not comparable. The limited number of participants and the short duration of pilot testing inhibit the generalization of their results. Technical problems and limitations of the equipment used are mentioned as the most frequent obstacles. Not all key-actors were involved in the design and development process of the applications. This suggests that further research is needed to fully understand the potential of AR applications in education and to develop effective evaluation methods. Key aspects for future research studies are proposed.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) Into Adult Education

“…VR and AR also provide a way to easily visualize abstract concepts (e.g., interactions between atoms and molecules in 3D virtual environments) (Blaha, 2016) and have the potential to more fully express and explore the full complexity of the human experience (Hackl, 2017). The potential applications for VR and AR are wide-ranging and can cut across multiple disciplines (Koumpouros, 2024).…”

“…Immersive learning experiences to promote skills development and deep learning of complex concepts (Blaha, 2016;Koumpouros, 2024).…”

Augmented Reality in Elementary Education: System Architecture for Implementing an Interactive and Immersive E-Learning Application

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