Did you know that your books can help you in viewing 3D content and it is possible to walk thru it as a true surround environment without leaving your classroom? You can see 3D model of a heart in your biology class or view a roman house, move anywhere in the world and feel the place, all this in the middle of a classroom. These are just some of the possibilities that technology offer to the education world today.
AR is an opportunity for colleges and universities, not only to share the course content with the learners, but as a way to communicate with learners and improve the student experience.
AR allows you to add digital content to printed material, geographic locations and objects. Then using a smart device or tablet, viewers can scan an object and the digital content will appear on their devices. The digital information can range from a link to a website, an invitation to make a phone call, a video, a 3D model or any other supported digital information.
Some Universities have used combination of techniques to develop resources for healthcare students whereby they use GPS functionality of devices in conjunction with AR to allow students to discover health risks in the locality.
A lot of Universities are using AR within their prospectus to market and promote themselves. They can use AR to give a walk thru of facilities to prospective students, especially those students who are not from the city or country, programs offered, show past performance of the university, alumni, accreditation, etc. It is an interactive way of engaging with your audience.
How does AR benefit students and Universities? AR provides effective way to enable learners to access engaging content. The content is highly interactive which helps learners in absorbing knowledge better compared to traditional ways of teaching. Benefit for the Universities is that students are open to innovative ways of learning, with nearly a third saying tech facilities played a part in their choice of selecting a University. One third of students opt for Virtual classroom and mobile apps to help them study.
As an emerging technology, AR will play a key role in near future not only in Educational Institutes but also at workplace.
