Unseen Worlds: AR and QR

As I am a little bit familiar with the AR and QR because of my job I did not do too much research about it. There is a lot of literature available on the topic and I focused mine on the use of AR in education. Here is a link to my Diigo stream in regards to the topic: https://groups.diigo.com/group/uaf-digital-storytelling/content/tag/%23onidar

I think there is a lot of benefits in using AR for education in terms of more immersive and engaging experience. There are many examples of AR and VR use and projects already. I found this article to be most comprehensive on the subject as far as educational use and links to particular apps in existence: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-02-how-to-transform-your-classroom-with-augmented-reality

For this project, I decided to concentrate on Instructional Design and work with an already existing project that I have been working on. I chose to remake a large part of a micro-learning module about different areas of the brain I have created in Captivate into an AR assisted app. You can see the module here: http://ghostandpenny.com/idportfolio/microlearning/ (it might take a second to load). A large portion of this module is a conglomeration of different screens identifying and explaining what different areas of the brain do. The downside of that approach is navigating between them back and forth which I think makes it more difficult to put the different areas of the brain in context and see the physical relationships between them. I think it adds to extraneous load and makes it more difficult for students to make proper connections. I found AR being an extremely good solution in this case as it will allow students to never go out of the big picture and interact with different areas of the brain on one screen. I plan to delete the separated description pages and instead replace it with one screen that will allow the interaction. Another good use for this Aura would be a printed page that students can scan with their phones to interact and learn followed up by a short quiz to check their acquired knowledge.

I decided to try using Aurasma to bring this undertaking to life and it really has been an “undertaking.” It took a lot of time to figure out the logic of actions as I found it counter-intuitive. At first, I thought that “mask” will create a “hotspot” as by expected behavior of many applications you would create overlays to the image right from the start. Once I realized that the first step is essentially useless for anything other than changing the trigger image the process became smoother. The application of actions was a bit confusing and they did not always work as I expected. So I had to watch a number of tutorials to really understand how actions work. That being said, once you grasp the logic of Aurasma and it’s limitations it is fairly easy to create an Aura and I was satisfied with the result.

You can subscribe to my Auras by scanning this QR code:

To experience this Aura, touch any title of the brain area. It should pull up the screen with the description and a graphic isolating that spot. Once you are done learning about the area, touch it again. It will disappear and you can proceed to learn about other areas:

In conclusion, I think this project will translate well into the 3-D model in the future. It would be amazing to have a 3-D model of the brain that you can rotate and “touch” and as you touch it the definitions and pathologies can pop up. Similarly, for assessment, different areas of the brain can light up with a field where students can type their answers. It is stuff like this that gets me excited about the Unseen Worlds.