A SMARTPHONE-BASED AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEM FOR UNIVERSITY PHYSICS COURSE

Abstract

Currently, the rapid development of mobile technologies necessarily entails their further use in education. Mobile devices such as netbooks, personal digital assistants, tablets and smartphones can be learning tools with great potential. Moreover, such additional instruments can be used at any, especially higher and secondary level of education. The article discusses the possibility of using mobile devices in the educational process. In particular, the features of mobile learning, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of mobile devices in education were considered. The existing mobile applications that are used within physics course in universities and schools abroad and in Kazakhstan were analyzed. This paper is devoted to the development of a mobile application using elements of augmented reality technology for university physics course. The mobile application gives access to a laboratory practical, practical tasks and animations. Augmented reality used in the application allows creating virtual elements that simulate physical objects and processes. This, in turn, helps students to understand better a certain physical phenomenon. The Unity 3D cross-platform environment was chosen as the development platform. For the implementation of the augmented reality functions the Vuforia library was used. The main functionality was written in C #. Graphic models were created using 3DX MAX. The article describes the development process of the presented mobile application, its functionality, as well as the user interface. It was shown that the use of mobile technologies in education can improve the quality of training and the attractiveness of the provided educational services. In the education system of Kazakhstan mobile learning is developing and improving. The developed mobile application is universally applicable to physics and offers great prospects for widespread adoption.