seven months' ago, i posted my early thoughts on the phenomenological roots of the affordances for learning of Augmented Reality.
that post was a shot across the bow of the default design paradigm of how Augmented Reality has been used in learning interventions thus far.
my team and i have been blessed with insights in to a more affordable, sustainable and diffusible approach to using Augmented Reality in learning environments.
over the summer and fall, we worked hard with our friends from the National Pingtung University to enact the approach in their first-year chemistry curriculum. in parallel, two of my high-school interns adopted the same approach with their own peers in chemistry curriculum at the high-school level in Singapore.
we have termed our approach Learner-Generated Augmentation.
we have published our work in a special issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (Volume 11 Number 3), themed on Pedagogy and Learning; this issue commemorates a decade of pedagogical innovation in virtual worlds and immersive environments, and the first of its two parts is now accessible online.
what follows is the abstract of our paper, titled: Representations of Novice Conceptions with Learner-Generated Augmentation: A Framework for Curriculum Design with Augmented Reality
This paper describes how learner-constructed Augmented Reality was used in an intervention among science undergraduates in Taiwan, to help their course instructor have a clearer understanding of how novices in chemistry approach and seek to make sense of key concepts in this discipline.
The intervention was carried out in the latter half of 2018 using a freely-available app which could be downloaded to any smartphone or tablet which supports Augmented Reality. The undergraduates were introduced to the app and used its affordances as part of their course activities in chemistry.
We have termed the pedagogical approach described in this paper as Learner-Generated Augmentation. The intervention and pedagogical approach reported in this paper has potential implications on the design and adoption of subsequent applications of Augmented Reality in contexts of learning; this is because – at the very least – the approach described can be implemented at a lower cost of time, money, and manpower than earlier efforts at integrating Augmented Reality in to learning designs.
Results of surveys administered to participants are shared in this paper, as are samples of learner-constructed artifacts in Augmented Reality. It is hoped that the work reported might form the basis of subsequent studies in other disciplinary domains.
my team - particularly Kristal Ng, Joel Ng, Wang Yifei and Nicholas Woong - and i are very grateful to Professor Lin Sheau-Wen, Professor Kelvin H.-C. Chen, and Professor Huang Jong-Chin for their trust and friendship.
thank you!
