Augmented reality for education and training

Abstract

Interactive learning is a common method employed in colleges and universities today as with the growing popularity of personal computers. In comparison with their interactive learning, more and more students find their traditional paper-based course work dull. Hence in today’s IT age, interesting appearance of knowledge is an important factor that motivates students to learn while traditional learning materials are found no longer interesting to lots of students [1].

In this project the author proposed to create an interactive teaching aid for the lecturers which allows them to teach nonfigurative and difficult theories and principles in a more interesting and attractive way, in which the users can demonstrate virtual 3D objects on the background of 3D physical world and have a feeling that they can touch or grasp those virtual models. And that would finally raise the students’ interests in learning the knowledge and help them understand it better.

Two AR teaching aids were proposed and developed, with the first one to demonstrate the Electromagnetic Wave propagation model for the EEE subject of Engineering Electromagnetic, and the second teaching aid to elaborate the 3D atomic model of ethane for the EEE subject of Chemistry. The evaluation of the performance of the two teaching aids at the end of the report gave a good feedback on the effectiveness of AR Teaching Aid in reaching the subject teaching objectives.

Meanwhile, the two approaches of developing AR Teaching Aid, OpentGL + ARToolKit and 3DMax + ARToolKit were also discussed in details, which provided directions and guidance for people who might do research in AR in the future.