Augmented reality as a digital teaching environment to develop spatial thinking

Abstract

Digital three-dimensional (3D) cartography environments provide new ways of landscape visualization and topographic interpretation: digital terrain modeling (DTM) is added to the traditional cartographic technique, where relief interpretation skill is needed to interpret 3D topographic information from 2D representations. The emergence of augmented reality (AR) technology for DTM representation offers a new way to develop map-reading skills. It is in the representation of the landforms (hills, dunes, depths, valleys, mountains, shapes, slopes, and elevations) where the AR allows a new way to interact with the landscape representation. Once AR technology is combined with tablet computers, the manipulation of DTM can be done by finger gestures. This paper analyzes the potential of AR as an innovative teaching tool to improve relief interpretation skill based on the results of a workshop with 73 engineering students from La Laguna University, Spain. Participants performed exercises with 2D traditional techniques of relief representation and with AR. To compare the effect with and without AR, another group of 22 students conducted the workshop with only 2D relief representations. The gain was significantly better with the AR group; students who did not use AR had also a significantly better result, but their scores were still lower.