Abstract
Hamlet (and similar texts) can be difficult for students to follow initially. Often when students read, they may gloss over the text, missing key contexts. These problems lead to a lack of engagement in the literature classroom. The use of videos can help, but this often deters reading. This dilemma prompted the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) application to enhance Hamlet. By ‘zooming in’ on specific elements of Hamlet—Act I Scenes IV and V (the ghost scenes)— students explore and gain valuable information on the context behind these scenes. Students discover their perspective on a key question in the play; is the ghost real, or is it coinage from Hamlet’s brain? Students can arrive at a more concrete understanding of their own thoughts and take away a better grasp of both the context of the scene and the character of Hamlet through their active participation in the application.
 
 Primarily, this article will highlight the dramatic effect student experience, both real and perceived, had on the development and execution of the application. The goal is to convey the pedagogical questions addressed when conceptualizing the application: the desired learning outcomes, the perceived student audience, and the need to connect game actions to the text of the play. It is one thing to speculate what students may want/need in such an environment from an instructor’s perspective. It’s another to analyze student and instructor feedback to help highlight critical areas more effectively. Students not only learn through their actions in the app; they help create the design of the application through their feedback. The article will detail the development of the application through this user input and the impact of praxis on its iteration.
Highlights
Modern students often learn with a technology-first attitude.1 At the same time, many students, those in STEM majors, view reading complex literary texts like Hamlet as both difficult and unappealing.2 Given the former, we envisioned a way to alleviate the latter with technology
We investigated the efficacy of technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and VR—ones that have seen success in STEM applications—in humanities education, where few such projects exist
We focused on the learning outcomes of identifying historical and cultural contexts as we saw the traditional way of teaching these consumes valuable class time
Summary
Modern students often learn with a technology-first attitude. At the same time, many students, those in STEM majors, view reading complex literary texts like Hamlet as both difficult and unappealing. Given the former, we envisioned a way to alleviate the latter with technology. Many students, those in STEM majors, view reading complex literary texts like Hamlet as both difficult and unappealing.. Many students, those in STEM majors, view reading complex literary texts like Hamlet as both difficult and unappealing.2 Given the former, we envisioned a way to alleviate the latter with technology. That technology can serve as an entryway into literary analysis, close reading, and the historical context of the play, on existing research in digital humanities, extended reality (AR/VR) in education, and traditional Shakespeare pedagogy. This article will outline the application development process and how pedagogy, learning outcomes, student feedback, and beta testing informed the design, scene/text selection, and the technological platform we chose to use. We created several demos and prototypes (outlined in Methodology) to collect student-user feedback on the project’s overall perceived effectiveness, along with student attitudes toward engaging with the background of a text like Hamlet to better understand the play itself
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
