Introduction

The application, prototype title “Where in the world?”, is an augmented reality application that requires users to physically move around a 3D globe and quizzes the user on the flags of countries around the world, but can be adapted to test many different types of geographical and historical knowledge.

Description of the application

The application is designed to operate on a student's phone and or tablet. Once the target image is recognised a 3D globe of the world appears. In the proof of concept the user is presented with a flag of a country and is tasked with moving around the 3D globe in order to find the location of the country which owns that flag. By clicking on the name of the country the application will confirm if the user correctly guessed the country. The application keeps track of how many times a user has answered correctly vs incorrectly. Additional features which could be added to this application given sufficient finances and time include:

An account system to keep track of users statistics

• A time trial mode where users must race against the clock to answer as many correct answers as possible
• A difficulty scale so that users of different education levels can receive the appropriate challenge
• Rather than just testing the user which country owns what flag, users can be asked the nation of origin on a variety of topics including but not limited to
  • Geographic landmarks
  • Famous buildings 
  • Famous people
  • World leaders
  • Events in history
  • Inventions
• The difficulty can be further increased by adding a timeline which requires users to not only identify which nation the object came from but also what time period
• Class room functionality which allows teachers to add students into a group which allows them to compare scores and application usage.

This application is designed to aid in the education of geography and history. Radu, I. (2014) argues that “Several papers report that a user's memory is better for content presented with AR than non-AR. The enhanced memory encoding may be caused by the physical immersion of AR experiences, and the fact that users interact by moving their body and limbs, which potentially cause learners to encode tactile and proprioceptive information along with the educational content”. By requiring the student to move around an AR globe they incorporate movement into their learning, leading to increased engagement when compared to examining a map in a textbook or on a computer screen. 

The added benefit of this AR solution is that it may simplify the mental model the user has of the globe. (Furness, 2001) asserts that “Humans are 3D spatial beings” and that “We must exploit the fundamental 3D perceptual organisation of the human in order to get bandwidth into the brain.” by presenting the world as a 3D object and not a 2D representation of one, users will see and interact with the globe as it is. Potentially reducing the mental effort of trying to convert between the two models and increase learning throughput.

Interaction Design

There are two primary interactions which can be seen in the prototype application. The first of these is the ability of the user to change their view of the globe. This can be accomplished by either moving around the AR target image or by manipulating the AR target image itself. The second interaction is the ability to touch the name of a country that the user is looking at on the device. This will give the user visual and audio feedback depending on if the correct country was selected. It is worth noting that in the prototype there are only a handful of countries that are selectable. Selecting anywhere else on the 3D globe will have no effect. These interactions are essential as they allow the user to learn through physical movement, audio and visual feedback. Wu et al. (2013) agrees that having students inspect the 3D object from a variety of different perspectives can enhance their understanding of the learning content. While Furness (2011) would concur that use of multiple sensory and psychomotor modalities increases the effective bandwidth to and from the brain, thus enhancing learning.

Storyboard

Technical Development

The application uses Vuforia SDK to handle the AR camera’s interactions with the custom made target image. When the AR camera recognises the target image an object is spawned above it, This object contains a sphere with a material so that it resembles a 3D globe and 6 capsule colliders with no materials. These capsules correspond with one of the following countries: Australia, The United States of America, The United Kingdom, Canada, Indonesia and Poland. The Capsules are situated above the names of their respective country such that when it is selected (OnMouseDown event) it will trigger an event in the GameManager which checks if the country selected matches the country that was randomly selected and displayed on the UI. If the user selected correctly the GameManager will add 1 to the user's correct score, flash the text green three times and play the correct guess sound effect. If the user selected incorrectly the GameManager will add 1 to the user's incorrect score, flash the text red three times and play the incorrect guess sound effect. UI Holder GameObject holds the various UI elements and the GameManager. 

Descriptions of 3D Models

The application only utilises a single 3D model. A default unity sphere with a high resolution world map as a material. The material in game has been edited to improve the propositions and visibility of counties when applied to the sphere model. This is what the user interacts with to guess what country owns the randomly selected flag.

References

https://chat.openai.com/share/a199c55e-4137-489a-a992-cf2197275c1a

ChatGPT was used for the following:

• Generate a list of benefits of using AR for education app to help generate ideas for the application
• How to make 3D globe with intractable countries. This turned out to be far too complicated for this prototype so I resorted to the simple sphere with capsule buttons
• Code to rotate the sphere with arrow keys which was used in earlier, pre AR prototype
• Code to declare countries custom data structure and 2D array (final iteration is slightly different)
• How to reference sprites assets folder, ended up using editor to add sprites
• How to turn images to sprites
• Troubleshooting issues with sprites
• Generating a random number in unity
• Searching for way to have capsules act as buttons
• Change source image in code
• Recommending academic literature
• Making text mesh pro blink a different colour (modified in final code)

High Resolution World Map By: GISGeography Last Updated: August 12, 2023

https://gisgeography.com/high-resolution-world-map/

Radu, I. (2014). Augmented reality in education: a meta-review and cross-media analysis. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, [online] 18(6), pp.1533–1543.

Furness, T.A. (2001). Toward Tightly Coupled Human Interfaces. Frontiers of Human-Centered Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environments, pp.80–98. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0259-5_7.

Wu, H.-K., Lee, S.W.-Y., Chang, H.-Y. and Liang, J.-C. (2013). Current status, opportunities and challenges of augmented reality in education. Computers & Education, 62(62), pp.41–49. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.024.

Myinstants (n.d.). Buzzer - Sound Button. [online] myinstants. Available at: https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/buzzer-89244/ [Accessed 18 Aug. 2023].

‌

Myinstants (n.d.). correct (ding) - Sound Button. [online] myinstants. Available at: https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/correct-ding/.

www.dafont.com. (n.d.). JMH Typewriter Font | dafont.com. [online] Available at: https://www.dafont.com/jmh-typewriter.font.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of Australia. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Australia.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2018). Flag of the United States. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of Canada. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Canada.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of Poland. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Poland.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of Indonesia. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Indonesia.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of the United Kingdom. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.

‌

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Flag of Monaco. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Monaco.

‌

‌

‌