Traditional methods of education are slowly becoming obsolete in the fast digital world. In fact, it is expected that the eLearning industry might touch the $680.1 billion mark by the year 2027. Today, the eLearning industry is driven by digitalization, mobile technology, and innovations. Augmented Reality has been the latest in this industry with some amazing benefits and use cases.
Above all, AR technology can open up amazing opportunities for institutions, businesses, and students around the world. In this blog, we are going to learn how AR technology is enhancing the quality of education.
What is AR Technology?
Augmented Reality (AR) is all about the digital integration of information into the real-world environment in real time. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), AR technology relies on the real-world environment to generate interactive information for the users. Moreover, it can change the natural environments with digital and three-dimensional (3D) components in someone’s perception of the real world. Many businesses are implementing this technology into their digital solutions with the help of a mobile app development company.
Augmented Reality can have multiple use cases in different industries. A smartphone or glasses can help people to experience the visual elements, sound, and other sensory elements of AR technology. Understanding the individual features of the physical world and deriving smart insights is the main goal of augmented Reality. It is also predicted that wearable devices will also have a major breakthrough in augmented Reality. This will encourage the widespread adoption of wearable technologies.
What are the Benefits of AR Technology in the Education Industry?
Augmented Reality in education can have a significant impact on the learning and teaching experience. These are some remarkable benefits of implementing Augmented Reality in education;
Improvement in Student Engagement and Level of Interest
Traditional learning setup is often textual and becomes monotonous after a certain time. Thus, it becomes incredibly hard for institutions to ensure good student engagement in the learning process. AR can help educational institutes ensure a high level of engagement by creating highly interactive curriculum content. This would also help them to build a new level of interest to let the students explore new interests.
Photo by XR Expo on UnsplashInteractive Learning Environment
Classes using AR technology are able to make the learning experience more interactive with more hands-on activities. Moreover, it becomes much easier to implement learning methodologies like project-based learning. This naturally enhances the learning environment and helps students to learn practical skills.
Diverse and Quality-Based Content
The quality of content is very important in the education industry. Good quality content would help teachers and institutions to leave a long-lasting impact on the students. AR technology can help the curriculum planner to create the most interesting and diverse course curriculum for the students. Ultimately, this would also improve the learning experience of the students.
Better Collaboration Opportunities
Augmented Reality is an innovative digital technology. Thus, it provides incredible and effective tools for collaboration. Multiple teachers can work on a single piece of content to continuously refine its quality. This collaborative approach toward education content creation helps students to learn faster and more efficiently.
Better Impact on Memory
AR technology provides the most realistic, immersive learning experience. Thus, engaging content could be very helpful in creating a long-lasting impact on the student. For example, AR-ready content to show the Jurassic era will have a better impact on the learner than ordinary textbooks.
Cost-Effective Solutions
People often consider AR equipment cost to be a major barrier while implementing this technology. However, the smartphone revolution is helping businesses to use this technology with its built-in hardware capabilities. Therefore, Augmented Reality in education could be a very cost-effective approach to innovating the learning experience. Instead of buying expensive textbooks, students can just learn from interactive AR videos.
Modern smartphones are sufficient enough to AR technology effectively and provide a photo-realistic experience to the users.
Types of Augmented Reality Solutions We Can Use in the Education Sector
These are some of the best use cases where Augmented Reality in education can help students and teachers;
Premade Markers
The idea of using markers in AR to display content on various surfaces is gaining massive popularity. In fact, there are so many apps that focus on using AR markers or triggers to relate to the concepts. The students can easily view the content by using their devices on the page.
The teachers will save a lot of time, usually spent on creating custom markers. Thus, they can focus more on other important things.
AR Worksheets
In the age of ‘Save Paper’ campaigns, AR worksheets can be very helpful for teachers and students. Moreover, students can access these worksheets from the convenience of their homes. This will make the assignments more fun and engaging for the students. Students from school and colleges can greatly benefit from this, as they won’t need to carry heavy notebooks anymore.
AR-Enabled Photos
Pictures make the learning experience highly interactive and fulfilling. Therefore, Augmented Reality in education will prove to be an awesome tool for schools and other educational organizations. Students will be able to scan the walls to generate relevant AR content on their devices.
It would make the learning experience less monotonous and provide innovative solutions to teach the lessons.
AR for Experimenting
Today’s science labs of schools and colleges often consist of dangerous chemicals and elements. Any mismanagement could even lead to life-threatening situations. Therefore, AR technology can be used in such institutions to create virtual simulations for these experiments.
Science teachers would be able to teach the experiments in safe learning environments. Moreover, the content could be made very interactive by helping students to scan various lab instruments to extract their instructions and rules. Therefore, they will be able to ensure safety while conducting these experiments.
Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on UnsplashFuture of AR in Education
The constant innovation in AR and VR technologies is set to define the future of the eLearning industry. Accordingly, the traditional methods of teaching are getting modified to innovate the learning process.
This technology has shown significant growth since 2018. According to research conducted by Markets and Markets, the AR market cap is expected to touch a massive $72.4 billion by 2024.
Generation Alpha will become the most invested generation to utilize the benefits of Augmented Reality in education. Thus, many businesses are considering reaching a prominent education app development company to develop their digital solutions with AR technology.
These Alpha students don’t prefer learning from regular textbooks anymore. In fact, they believe in concept simplification through interactive videos, games, or audio. Thus, AR and VR technologies have a bright future in the education sector. Ultimately, the alpha generation will be the first successful consumers of these technologies.
The industry still lacks formal training to use this new technology in its daily learning experience. Moreover, only open-minded teachers and technology-friendly institutions.
Conclusion
Augmented Reality technology is helping many industries to innovate their user experiences. Shopping, manufacturing, entertainment, and other industries have seen massively adopting the use of VR and AR technologies. Many education companies are already building their digital solutions with these technologies. If you also want to build such an innovative solution, then hiring a leading education app development company could be the best option for your education business.
Author Bio
Erma Winter is a professional mobile app developer at MobileCoderz, a leading mobile app development company. Over the years, she and her team have developed multiple eLearning solutions with innovative technologies like AR, VR, and Cloud Computing. Lastly, apart from her professional life, she takes a keen interest in surfboarding and playing with her pets.