Designing and Developing an Augmented Reality Application: A Sample Of Chemistry Education

Abstract

Augmented Reality has been accepted as an effectiveeducational method and this review depends on philosophical background ofcognitive science. This means, several channels –aural, visual, andinteractivity, etc. - have been usedto offer information in order to support individual learning styles. In thisstudy, Natural User Interface- and Human Computer Interaction-based AugmentedReality application has been developed for the chemistry education. The purposeof this study is to design and develop a student-centered Augmented Realityenvironment to teach periodic table, and atomic structure of the elements andmolecules. Head Mounted Display has been used to develop Augmented Realitysystem, and user control has been executed with hand motions (grab, drag, drop,select and rotate). The hand motion control has been used to improve spatialabilities of students in order to maximize the transferred knowledge. Use ofthe most common natural controlling tools (fingers and hands) to interact withvirtual objects instead of AR markers or other tools provides a moreinteractive, holistic, social and effective learning environment thatauthentically reflects the world around them. In this way, learners have anactive role, and are not just passive receptors. Correspondingly, the developedNUI-based system has been constructed as design-based research and developed byusing instructional design methods and principles to get reach of moreeffective and productive learning material. Features of this developed materialconsist of some fundamental components to create more intuitive and conductivetools in order to support Real World collaboration.