11 Surprising Ways Augmented Reality in Education Can Improve Grades

Pokemon GO has been an enormous success. It’s now the most popular game in US history, the most used mobile application. It has led to an unrivaled internet craze since the late 90s.

But it’s not just one of the biggest game hits, and it might also be one of the biggest AR games (or gamified apps, or whatever you want to call it). So what exactly does that mean? What’s so special about it?

Why all the hype? When looking further into it, Pokemon Go does not do anything revolutionary and instead relies on using our everyday environment as a platform for gameplay and discovery. And this brings our ‘general’ topic quite close to home: how can augmented reality in education improve results?

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are often considered the core subjects in education. Bringing virtual reality into education usually requires science, technology, engineering, and mathematics knowledge because these subjects require various tools and equipment.

With augmented reality education, any subject outside of STEM could be augmented with this technology. Business and education are just two subjects that could benefit from augmented reality.

Where Can Augmented Reality in Education Be Used?

The most obvious place for AR in the classroom. Imagine being able to show students the inner workings of the human body on a desk-sized scale without having to take out a scalpel.

Or visualizing parts of history as they happened instead of seeing it through still images and film footage. AR helps students visualize and understand concepts much more quickly than if they were only using textbooks.

Tourism is also an area ripe for AR adoption. Imagine being able to point your phone at an old building and seeing how it looked when it was first built or when it was bombed during World War II and rebuilt afterward. The possibilities are endless.

How Is AR Transforming the Education Industry?

Augmented Reality is not just for gamers. AR technology has the potential to benefit a wide range of industries, including education.

It has already begun to do so. For example, students using virtual reality headsets can take virtual field trips and learn about dinosaurs interactively without ever leaving the classroom.

In another example, NASA has partnered with Google to create a field trip to Mars that allows students to explore the Red Planet’s surface and interact with 3D objects.

By wearing a cardboard headset, students can “visit” Mars and learn about the planet’s terrain and history in an immersive environment that is far more engaging than reading a textbook or watching a video.

The educational opportunities provided by augmented Reality are immense. However, its true power lies in the future: providing an immersive learning experience is currently the primary function of AR technology in the classroom, but it can do so much more.

How Will Augmented Reality Improve Education?

The education industry has evolved from blackboards and paper-based learning materials to intelligent classes and digital learning devices, but it’s not enough.

AR takes the experience of learning a step further by making it easier to access content and understand concepts.

1. It Provides Acquiring Knowledge

Augmented Reality can provide opportunities for acquiring knowledge in a given subject manner. This could be done through a project or activity from start to finish with one subject matter or could be implemented into an existing lesson plan as an addition to aiding in student learning and retention.

2. It Provides Interactive Learning

Augmented Reality provides an interactive learning experience that allows users to engage with their surroundings and receive information on specific topics or items in their physical environment (or digitally).

This provides an opportunity for students to learn about items or topics that may be difficult for them to grasp through traditional means, i.e., reading books or listening to music.

3. It Improves Student Engagement

The main problem with traditional educational methods is that they’re not engaging enough for most students. Augmented Reality offers an exciting way to learn new things because it allows users to interact with their environment ultimately.

4. It Provides Deep Learning

Because AR allows us to immerse in digital learning, it gives us a profound learning experience. As we all know, deep understanding is more effective than surface learning and shallow learning.

AR can help us have a sense of presence and real-time interaction with digital content. And that’s why we can have a more profound learning experience with AR.

5. Develop Critical Thinking Skills

Students need to think critically to analyze, evaluate and synthesize information derived from different sources. Critical thinking helps them learn to make informed decisions.

AR makes students become active participants rather than passive recipients of knowledge, which can help them develop critical thinking skills.

6. Enhance Problem-Solving Skills

Practical problem-solving requires developing and applying several skills, such as analyzing information and identifying problems, prioritizing issues and developing strategies to address concerns, and evaluating outcomes. Students can use AR tools to find solutions and test different techniques in various situations.

11 Ways Augmented Reality Education is changing Schools

As mentioned earlier, Augmented Reality has changed how learning was done before. If you are interested to know how AR is transforming the education system, then you can take a look at these top 11 ways below:

1. Learning Becomes Fun

The first way Augmented Reality has improved the education system is by making learning fun for kids. For example, if a kid does not like reading books, they can use an AR app to learn new things with just a click of their phone’s camera. It is one of those things in the 21st century that no one could have imagined even 10 years ago.

2. Enhance Understanding the World Around

Augmented Reality is transforming the way we learn by helping children explore and understand the world around them.

It is also helping improve their reading comprehension, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills and improve their visual perception, intelligence, and even creativity skills.

3. Improves Student Engagement

It has also helped improve student engagement by creating a sense of curiosity for students to learn more about their surroundings.

Moreover, it also helps them create new ideas on how to improve classroom activities and make their learning experience more interactive and engaging.

It also encourages them to invest more time and effort towards the subject they are doing, leading to better grades or higher scores.

4. Remote Interaction

AR allows students to interact with others from any part of the globe irrespective of where they are located physically or virtually using AR glasses and headsets, which provides a limitless amount of resources for students to access when studying or performing other tasks.

5. Better Learning Experiences

Augmented Reality helps students visualize concepts that are too large or too small for real-life viewing. AR also helps make learning more interactive and engaging for students by letting them interact with 3D objects instead of just reading about them from textbooks.

6. Simplifying Complex Topics

Complex topics can be hard to understand, predominantly theoretical or visualized with 2D images. However, Augmented Reality makes complex topics easier to understand by offering 3D content viewed from different angles.

Students can not only interact with the content but also manipulate it to visualize complex concepts in the best way possible. For example, students can dissect a frog and see its internal organs in augmented Reality.

7. Improving Problem-solving Skills

Problem-solving skills can be enhanced by encouraging students to use their creativity and imagination while interacting with AR content.

AR encourages students to think out of the box as they develop various solutions for a problem. It also improves their technical skills and abilities to develop creative solutions for issues related to technology.

8. Helping People with Disabilities

Augmented Reality has proven to be a great help for people with learning disabilities. The most notable cases are those of people who have dyslexia.

AR has been so successful in helping people with dyslexia that many educational institutions have started using it for this purpose.

9. Encouraging Collaboration

Augmented Reality is not only creating an active learning culture but also promoting a collaborative learning environment. Let’s take an example of a science class where the students are studying or learning about different types of plants and animals.

The teacher can use AR technology to present 3D images of plants and animals to the students, serving as a visual aid to understand their characteristics and differences better.

The best part is that the students can view this content simultaneously on their screens and collaborate or share ideas with others.

10. Promoting an Active Learning Culture

Augmented Reality technology has made learning and teaching more interactive, immersive, and engaging by providing opportunities for active learning to both students and educators.

Teachers can use Augmented Reality to provide interactive lessons to their students that include audio-visual content and 3D visualization of various concepts, which is more likely to improve learning culture.

11. Creating More Engaging Content

Augmented Reality helps create more engaging content for students as they have an opportunity to study 3D models instead of plain 2D pictures or diagrams.

This helps them understand the topics better and makes their learning experience more enjoyable. AR also allows teachers to take classes excitingly, keeping students attentive throughout the course.

Bottom Line

Hopefully, you have learned a few surprising things about how and why augmented Reality can be used in the classroom. Although Augmented Reality technology has been around for quite some time, it hasn’t been deployed comprehensively to improve education.

But with the rise of mobile phones that feature Augmented Reality technology and the rapid evolution of this technology, we are in what I believe are the early stages of augmented reality being used in education. The future of how Augmented Reality will improve education is exciting and holds great potential!

So go ahead: throw out your notes and turn off your books—or tap that app icon on your smartphone! You’ll be glad you did.