AR in Education: How to Make Learning Fun with Tech

How Augmented Reality Helps Educators Teach

According to research, most of us are visual learners — we learn and understand concepts best when provided with visual cues.

Augmented reality is therefore a great enabler of learning experiences, especially with the growing capabilities of this technology.

The rendering of objects has improved, along with the ability of 3D models to react to the environment in which they’re projected.

A systematic review of a decade of using AR in education (2008–2018) has revealed that augmented reality is “increasing motivation (24%) and facilitating interaction (18%).”

Various studies analyzed in the review also found that AR:

• Increases confidence in students
• Raises the level of commitment and interest
• Provides opportunities for self-learning
• Boosts collaborative learning
• Improves satisfaction

Now let’s take a closer look at how exactly augmented reality helps students learn better and more effectively.

Don't know much about AR? Head over to our guide on augmented reality for more details about this tech.

AR Boosts Student Engagement

While learning is fun in itself, some classes can bore even the most curious person out there. And let’s say it, when you’re bored, the last thing you want to do is to actually understand something.

With many schools and universities still using remote education in many countries, engagement is more important than ever to maintain the quality of education.

Augmented reality helps teachers stimulate students’ interest by providing them with immersive visual experiences.

Google is developing its AR capabilities full-throttle. With the company’s Google for Education initiative, educators can use several 3D models to help students better understand concepts and retain knowledge.

Many popular queries can be rendered in AR directly from the mobile browser on an Android phone.

AR Increases Learning Motivation

AR delivers immersive experiences with interaction features that increase student motivation to learn.

For example, undergraduate health science students exhibited greater learning motivation when using an augmented reality app to study human organs.

Interestingly, researchers found that “Anatomy 4D mobile application was better able to hold the attention of the students than the anatomy notes.”

By leveraging augmented reality, students can receive practical experience in multiple fields in a simulated learning environment.

AR Facilitates the Understanding of Difficult Concepts

Augmented reality can help students understand difficult and abstract concepts. For example, how the human digestive system looks and works like.

On a bigger scale, the enormity of the universe and our own solar system are difficult to comprehend, but augmented reality lets students get a more immersive view of such gargantuan structures.

Augmented reality lets students experience and understand scientific phenomena without actually running experiments.

For example, various chemical reactions are too dangerous to run in the classroom. By bringing these experiments into a tangible virtual environment, AR gives students access to many topics beyond reach.

Another way augmented reality makes learning immersive is by letting students manipulate objects and experience the resulting reactions and phenomena.

This way, students gain a better conceptual understanding of topics that could otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Augmented Reality Improves Learning Performance

Augmented reality helps students learn new concepts faster and more effectively.

For example, in a study evaluating zSpace, an AR/VR learning solution, researchers found that it was easier for students to understand concepts better when augmented reality was involved.

zSpace is a comprehensive solution built to create immersive classrooms for experiential learning. Using zSpace, educators can prepare custom learning material enriched with advanced augmented reality elements.

With tools such as zSpace, educators can craft curriculums in a way that makes it easier and faster for students to absorb information.

Medical students and engineers can perform procedures on virtual objects to practice their skills and gain the necessary knowledge.

AR Adds Context to Lessons

For history teachers, it can be tricky to maintain a seamless experience for students for the duration of the whole lesson.

Without an easily relatable context, students usually pore over dates and time periods — tangible visual material could help them digest the lesson better.

For example, when talking about hieroglyphs or historical structures, educators can render the object right in the classroom, and then deliver the lesson.

Building Immersive Homework with AR

Not all students are equally eager to do their homework. Some need a little more incentive.

Augmented reality helps make workbooks and textbooks more interesting by letting students engage in immersive 3D renderings of studied concepts.

Enriching student materials with AR is affordable and accessible. In the US, 53% of children under the age of 11 and 84% of teenagers own a smartphone.