AR/VR for Study Abroad

Project for Immersive & Augmented Environments for Learning Technology Module
Team: Lauren Totino, Juliet Norvig, Devan Walton, and Aaron Goldstein

Summary

Over the course of our 5-week design project, my team designed an "immersive orientation" experience as a way for university students to prepare for a semester abroad. Our project focused on leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology to support students in learning important cultural and logistical information about the host city they plan to study abroad in. We specifically decided to focus on students who would be studying abroad in Cairo, Egypt, which is a program that Boston College offers. We identified key topics that a student should learn about before getting to Cairo and that we would design AR/VR experiences for: language practice; culture and customs; shopping, currency, and food; transportation and navigation; and university life. I focused on university life, for which I designed an AR experience that would make up one piece of the overall immersive orientation.

Goals

We found it helpful not only to identify learning goals to address in our project, but to also state AR/VR goals, or goals for the technology aspect of the project. In other words, there are goals that we want students to achieve (the learning goals) but there are also goals that we want our design of the technology (i.e., features, interactions, aesthetics) to achieve.

Context & Learners

• Learners - Our target learner population is Boston College students who have applied to and were accepted in the study abroad program in Cairo, Egypt which is coordinated through BC’s Office of International Programs (OIP). Typically, these students would be current or rising juniors preparing to study abroad for one semester (about 3-4 months), either in the Fall, Spring, or Summer semester of their junior year. OIP requires students to attend pre-departure orientation, usually about 2 months ahead of time.

• Environment - Students would be invited to to go to the OIP Offices at Hovey House for the immersive pre-departure orientation. There would be a room/space set up with the AR/VR technology and tools, so students would not be responsible for having their own equipment. Tech would include iPads, Google Cardboards, and Oculus Quest and/or Valve Index (headsets, controllers, computers)

AR Interactive Campus Map of the American University in Cairo (AUC)

I tailored my topic of university life to specifically refer to living on and attending classes at the American University in Cairo (AUC) campus is New Cairo, since that is where BC students are placed for the Cairo program.

I started getting familiar with the campus and its buildings by creating a Google Tour of AUC for Week 4 of class. Since creating the Google Tour involved selecting sites from Google Street View, I wanted to expand on the idea of using a map, as it is a key material to reference when becoming oriented with a new location, especially a college campus.

Anything with maps seemed to be an opportunity for AR technology, so I developed the idea to create a campus map where the sites (i.e., buildings) would become 3D models on an interactive map in an AR environment. The aim was for this design idea to address one of the overall project’s learning goals of helping students become familiar with a foreign setting/environment in a way that is a step up from looking at static maps and photos.

My prototype features three key interactions that aim to support the student in achieving the learning goal of becoming familiar with a foreign setting; in this case, using an environment that is more dynamic and immersive than just looking at static maps and photos of the AUC campus.

I built the AR experience using the Reality Composer app, which is based on Apple’s ARKit framework. I would need to create the actual app that the students would use and it Reality Kit-enabled, so I could add the file where I created the models/interactions. For the purposes of this short 5-week design project, any viewing and testing was done via the Reality Composer app that I used for building.

The demo video below shows interactions on the map from within the Reality Composer app. While it does not show the AR in relation to the physical world, its purpose is to demonstrate:

• When you tap the green location marker, the building and text pop up

• When you tap the building or the text, the voiceover starts

Addressing Learning Objectives

• Positives - The main learning goal that my AR experience addresses is helping students to learn about a foreign setting/environment in order to become familiar with it. Specifically, it leverages an AR environment that helps the student feel like they would recognize key parts of campus and feel oriented more quickly upon arriving there in real life. Being able to interact with the 3D models of campus buildings through multiple senses - seeing models pop up, hearing voiceovers, tapping for more info - adds up to create a memorable experience that will help the learner become familiar with details of the campus before actually being there.

• Shortfalls - My current prototype does not really reflect “walking” around the campus, i.e., walking around the map on the table and seeing different location markers appear. It is just one example of a building and is pretty static. A true AR experience would mean the user gets to move around the physical world while the AR world updates in accordance. This is how the embodied learning happens, which is a goal of AR/VR for learning. In a real implementation, there should be several buildings and the map would update based on where the student’s iPad is hovering/positioned over the map.

Supporting & Sustaining Engagement

• Positives - The AR campus map experience sustains engagement because it allows for a richer, enhanced, and more interactive experience with an otherwise static physical campus map. The experience gives value to a common printed material without replacing it, which is important because a student will likely be in a situation where all they have is that printed material without the added technology (for example, if there is no Wifi on campus and they must navigate using a printed-out map). A student's motivation is more likely to be sustained when they recognize this utility value of the AR experience.

• Shortfalls - The current design lacks focus on how exactly to engage students in the content, other than the AR experience being offered as part of a larger immersive orientation experience. It does not offer how a student might get started with the AR experience specifically. Maybe, for example, students could be provided with guiding questions so they feel like they have more direction while using the AR, versus just playing around and exploring at will. Or maybe each student could be given a hypothetical "first day schedule," which would give a list of buildings/locations they have to visit in a certain order. Giving them a list of things to look for or to practice would make them engage with the experience for a longer period of time, increasing the amount of learning happening.

Understanding the Affordances of AR- Once I decided to go in the direction of AR instead of VR, I originally thought about only digital considerations and not much about the natural context for the AR. For example, I played around with the idea of digital models for both the map and the buildings on the map, where the map would be digitally embedded in Reality Composer as an object. However, I changed my mind after seeing an example on YouTube of an AR map of Barcelona created by Smartech Group. I drew inspiration from how the map of Barcelona was physical - one a tourist would carry around - and that the AR in this case was a true enhancement of physical reality.

Learning Reality Composer - In addition to doing research on the AUC campus for my piece of the project, I also taught myself how to use Reality Composer. Through lots of trial-and-error and searching for Reality Composer tutorials online, I became increasingly familiar with the capabilities and constraints of the tool for building an interactive campus map with 3D models of buildings.

• Using AR/VR tech - It’s more important to use the tool to the capacity of being able to understand what it allows you to do and what it doesn’t allow, and mapping that to your project goals and your ideal state of the product. Whereas it is not necessarily a good practice to make changes from your original idea just to satisfy the tech and guarantee it works. It’s not about making your ideal product come to life, it’s about understanding what is and what isn’t possible, which does not require you to become a super-user of the tech.

• It's still new! - Immersive environments for learning, particularly ones that use AR and VR technology, constitute a somewhat still nascent concept. It’s a bit too early for there to really be “experts”in this field (compared to fields that have extensive literature and years of research, like other areas of the learning sciences).

• Overturning misconceptions - I overturned a lot of misconceptions (and wrong definitions) I had about AR - it’s not just all Pokemon Go! Since I had previously only been familiar with Pokemon Go, I learned a lot about the other purposes of AR. Many examples we looked at in the course had to do with rotating and walking around models, which I had not considered before as an affordance of AR. I was so drawn to this idea, I incorporated this into my project.

• Goals are good - It's important to design an AR/VR experience that communicates a specific goal or purpose. This helps when trying to find the balance between pure entertainment and learning (much like games for learning). And it influences how learners feel invited and stay engaged, which are two key things to keep in mind while designing a learning experience.

• Ideation & imagination - I changed my perspective a bit on incorporating technology into a learning environment. In the first month or so of the Learning Engineering program, I had commented about how it seems challenging to think of topics or disciplines that would make sense for using AR/VR. Now, my thinking has shifted to be more open, where I instead ask myself, how can AR/VR support the learning of any topic or discipline?