Augmented Reality Enhances Learning

Christo­pher Holden

Aug­mented real­ity – enhanc­ing the real world in real time with computer-generated data – can con­nect users more deeply with their real sur­round­ings. Christo­pher Holden, assis­tant pro­fes­sor, UNM Uni­ver­sity Hon­ors, uses mobile aug­mented real­ity games to cre­ate inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tional experiences.

Holden uses ARIS to design edu­ca­tional games and to pro­mote stu­dent learn­ing through design of inter­ac­tive, place-based sto­ries in the form of games or tours for the iPhone and iPod touch. ARIS, Aug­mented Real­ity for Inter­ac­tive Sto­ry­telling, is a free, open source soft­ware cre­ated by the ARIS team led by David Gagnon, Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son. Because it is open source, any­one can use, mod­ify or repack­age the software.

The author­ing envi­ron­ment is a sim­ple, online – no instal­la­tion required – drag and drop edi­tor. “We’re mak­ing video games here, but we’re not doing pro­gram­ming,” Holden said. “One of the real aims for the design tool of ARIS is to make it so that really any­one could pick this up as a story-telling tool, and to tell their sto­ries in the places where they live or the places they’re inter­ested about.”

Hon­ors stu­dent Alyssa Con­cha took the pilot class of Local Games in Albu­querque last semes­ter and will stu­dent teach it with Holden in the fall. “The idea was to use mobile games… to recon­nect peo­ple to Albu­querque as a place and explore the way that dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als view their home­town or their envi­ron­ment and how they inter­act with it,” she said.

Last semes­ter, stu­dents designed games look­ing at Albu­querque in rela­tion to recy­cling, geol­ogy and other top­ics. In one project, Dig­i­tal Graf­fiti Gallery, par­tic­i­pants pho­tographed graf­fiti at UNM and loaded the pic­tures to a cen­tral data­base with their geospa­tial coor­di­nates. “You build up a map of graf­fiti at UNM,” Holden said. “It’s a way of cap­tur­ing some­thing that’s ephemeral, and still keep­ing it in place.”

To cre­ate Favorite Spot in the World, stu­dents recorded peo­ple talk­ing about their favorite places around Albu­querque. “Peo­ple would be able to go to these places and see them in a new light, or maybe see some­one who has a shared inter­est in that place,” Holden said.

In both games, “play­ers help cre­ate the game as they play it,” he said.

Game design can be an effec­tive way of engag­ing stu­dents in the cur­ricu­lum. “Design­ing the game is a learn­ing process in itself,” Con­cha said.

Holden said, “When you have to make some­thing for some­one else, you tend to approach it in a much deeper way than if you’re just try­ing to cram infor­ma­tion into your own head. You think about it from more angles.”

Edu­ca­tors can also use ARIS to cre­ate games for stu­dents to play to learn a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject. Holden and Julie Sykes, assis­tant pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Span­ish & Por­tuguese, cre­ated Men­tira, a game where inter­me­di­ate Span­ish stu­dents ven­ture into a real Albu­querque neigh­bor­hood and use the mobile appli­ca­tion to find clues to solve a fic­tional mur­der mys­tery while learn­ing the language.

Holden said sub­jects that best pair with aug­mented real­ity learn­ing are those “that have a nat­ural con­nec­tion to place. Learn­ing Span­ish in Albu­querque should be some­thing that con­nects to the sur­round­ings. Other dis­ci­plines that read­ily con­nect to place are things like geog­ra­phy, architecture.”

He also designed games for mid­dle school stu­dents. “The nat­ural sur­round­ings around you are a nice focus for try­ing to learn about sci­en­tific con­cepts,” he said.

The recent ARIS Global Game Jam assem­bled stu­dents, edu­ca­tors and oth­ers to make games with ARIS in just three days. Holden said most par­tic­i­pants were new­com­ers, and many were mid­dle and high school stu­dents in Wis­con­sin. Stu­dents par­tic­i­pated at UNM, with other par­tic­i­pants con­nect­ing from Min­nesota, Col­orado, Spain, the Nether­lands, Maine, Cal­i­for­nia, Colom­bia, Illi­nois, New York and Vir­ginia. Par­tic­i­pants com­mu­ni­cated over video chat. More than 100 par­tic­i­pants cre­ated 127 games, with 19 show­cased in the clos­ing ceremony.

Con­tact Holden to learn about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ARIS project.