Teaching millennials with augmented reality: cases from the U.S. education system

Abstract

This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of two separate classroom experiments using mobile augmented reality (AR) for teaching abstract topics to undergraduate architecture and construction students in two U.S. universities. The presented work is motivated by the fact that the new generation of students (millennials) have a natural ability to use technology and digital information, and show a great affinity for integrating new tools and mobile devices in their daily activities. In contrast, many existing instructional delivery methods are still teacher-centered and based on lectures and memorization to pass knowledge and information onto the students. The first project described in this paper is a construction AR magic book in which an ordinary course textbook was enhanced by overlaying multimedia contents such as images, videos, 3D models, and other visuals on top of the printed figures and diagrams of the book. The second project in this paper, describes the development of an immersive AR application called Skope, which is designed to enhance students’ site visit experience. This application, superimposes the BIM model of an existing building on the real-world building, allowing students to interact with different parameters of the model such as orientation, sitting, direction of prevailing winds, construction processes, structural systems, connection details, and the heating, cooling and ventilation systems. Overall, the assessment of student performance metrics and opinions collected in each project indicates that using AR technology in classroom has a good potential to improve student learning and engagement in the subject matter, and help them better relate abstract topics to real-world problems.