Assignment 2/3 Report

Chosen Theme for Assignment 3 AR: 1, Education (Tools to Enhance Learning in Classrooms)

This application is designed to enhance learning and student engagement by providing a quick and efficient way of obtaining information. By opening an app on their phone, pointing the camera at a picture of the periodic table, and tapping on an element, students are able to obtain lots of information about each element without having to search through a textbook or look up the element online.

This application provides a fast an efficient way of obtaining desired information about the periodic table. It is faster than traditional forms of obtaining information, such as opening a textbook, finding the element and searching for the desired information, or looking up the element which requires identifying the element, opening the browser, typing the search query, and finding the most appropriate source. To use the application, students must open the app (which must be downloaded first. It is currently an APK file and would require more software to be used on non-android phones), point the camera at a periodic table (preferably a large, high resolution image inside the classroom, as is often found in science classrooms), and tap on the element they require information about. A popup wall of text and images containing information then overlays their screen, which can be closed by pressing the X button, and another element can be selected.

The significance of this application for the purposes of education, and more specifically increasing student engagement, is its ability to eliminate many sources of distraction or disinterest for students. Textbooks are becoming outdated for purposes of education, and online research poses problems of its own. The authors of an article discussing the impact of digital reading surveyed 262 college students. 73.7% of students reported that digital distraction affects their reading significantly or very significantly. The sources of distraction were varied, ranging from alerts and phone calls to hyperlinks and obtrusive advertisements. While many of the potential distractions would remain if this application was used on a personal phone, this application can be customized to provide an environment designed to minimize distraction.

While a website containing an image of a periodic table with the same functionality as this application could provide the same options and information, accessing said website would require searching for it and risking distraction from web browsers. Having a standalone app utilizing Augmented Reality would help prevent some of the distractions noted earlier, such as ads and hyperlinks. Another benefit of using unity and the Vuforia engine is its customization capacity. The target image for the application can be changed with very little effort, along with the content of the application, and unity is a relatively easy program to work with.

The application requires interaction to function fully. The user must point the camera of the device running the app at the correct image target until the app recognizes the image. The app will notify the user it has found the image. Then the user may select an element** and a popup will overlay their screen displaying the information about said element**. The popup can be closed by pressing the X button in the top right corner of the screen (mimicking typical desktop interfaces). While the popup is active other content (text confirming image found, other assisting content) is disabled so as to not cover the popup.

**Currently the application is very basic, containing buttons for only the first 4 elements with only the name of each element in the popup, along with a simple piece of text at the top of the image confirming the image has been found. Future designs would include buttons for each element, as well as buttons to activated popups describing each group, column, row and section of the table, providing general information about the characteristics of elements within each. 

Liu, Z. ed., (2021). Reading in the age of digital distraction. [online] Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-07-2021-0130/full/html.

Imaged Target Obtained From: https://sciencenotes.org/periodic-table-for-kids-118-elements/