Benefits of Augmented Reality in distance learning

Many schools have shifted to home learning due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Some of them are already using digital tools to help their students with online lessons, learning apps and more. For some students distance learning will be the new normal as they thrive in this new learning environment and schools are starting to see the benefits.

But distance learning is also a challenge for teachers, who have to find new ways to engage their students in addition to online classes.

AR is a great solution to tackle this challenges! By offering additional content, which the students can explore by themself, teachers can add another level of engagement and learning. Here are some advantages:

Engagement

Studies show, that AR encreases the emgagement rate of children in museums and is benefical for the learning process the same goes of course also for distance learning. through interactive flashcards for language learning or an audio-file of the teacher narrating a picture or telling more about a page in a textbook, there are many option to help your students learn at home.

Interactivity

Much like flash cards interactive work sheets help students to learn more easily. By adding video or audio or even links to more information the work sheet becomes a helpful source of information in itself. And for classes like biology you can even add 3D models of human organs or for example a bird and its song. In addition to that the act of picking up the phone and using it to uncover more information makes students go from interactivity to engagement.

AR does not require expensive equipment

AR works just as fine on a cell phone as on a tablet and you don’t need a seperate device like with VR. This makes AR much more available  for all children. And if you want there is even the possibility to build your own vr device from cardboard and your cell phone and go on adventures with the whole class in Google expeditions https://edu.google.com/products/vr-ar/expeditions/

Take the school outside!

With AR it is possible to take the class outside. In some places it is even possible to arrange a treasure hunt around the city for older students and to make them discover for example local history. For art class students can place 3D models in their surrounding and write stories about them. And physical education can be made easier with 3d models of people showing for example yoga poses. The possibilities are endless.