A Pilot Study on the Use of Mobile Augmented Reality for Interactive Experimentation in Quadratic Equations

Ramón Iván Barraza Castillo,Vianey Guadalupe Cruz Sánchez,Osslan Osiris Vergara Villegas

doi:10.1155/2015/946034

Ramón Iván Barraza Castillo, Vianey Guadalupe Cruz Sánchez + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/946034

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Abstract

Recent studies have reported that the inclusion of new technological elements such as augmented reality (AR), for educational purposes, increases the learning interest and motivation of students. However, developing AR applications, especially with mobile content, is still a rather technical subject; thus the dissemination of the technology in the classroom has been rather limited. This paper presents a new software architecture for AR application development based on freely available components; it provides a detailed view of the subsystems and tasks that encompass the creation of a mobile AR application. The typical task of plotting a quadratic equation was selected as a case study to obtain feasibility insights on how AR could support the teaching-learning process and to observe the student’s reaction to the technology and the particular application. The pilot study was conducted with 59 students at a Mexican undergraduate school. A questionnaire was created in order to obtain information about the students’ experience using the AR application and the analysis of the results obtained is presented. The comments expressed by the users after the AR experience are positive, supporting the premise that AR can be, in the future, a valuable complimentary teaching tool for topics that benefit from contextual learning experience and multipoint visualization, such as the quadratic equation.

Highlights

Even though the first world countries are implementing different technological approaches to encourage the teachinglearning process to be more attractive, motivating, and meaningful to the students [1]; in countries such as Mexico, those approaches are still based on the traditional learning models, where the students attend a lecture, take notes on what the teachers write on the whiteboard, memorize facts from books, slides, or videos, and take written exams
(1) The “pARabola plotting” application has shown all the elements explained by the professor concerning the quadratic equation? (2) The results shown by the application were correct? (3) Do you consider that a virtual environment represents in a better way the concepts explained by the professor? (4) Do you consider that, by using the application, you will remember the concepts and in a better way?
The ability of the framework was tested with the so-called pARabola plotting used to explain the concept of a quadratic function to Mexican undergraduate students

Summary

Introduction

Even though the first world countries are implementing different technological approaches to encourage the teachinglearning process to be more attractive, motivating, and meaningful to the students [1]; in countries such as Mexico, those approaches are still based on the traditional learning models, where the students attend a lecture, take notes on what the teachers write on the whiteboard, memorize facts from books, slides, or videos, and take written exams In this context and as a result of different studies [2, 3], it was observed that there is still a necessity to integrate complementary technologies that can be exploited to enhance or create new types of learning environments for students and teachers. The main idea is to exploit the ability offered by the AR to enhance the user senses by manipulating virtual objects superimposed on top of the real world scenes [5]

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