AugmentedWearEdu - Integrating virtual and AUGMENTED reality with WEARable technology into engineering EDUcation.

AugmentedWearEdu - Integrating virtual and AUGMENTED reality with WEARable technology into engineering EDUcation.

Short name of the project: AugmentedWearEdu

Context

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have closed schools, leading to more than 80% of students worldwide being unable to attend. In response, educational institutions are increasing their efforts to utilize various educational technologies for remote learning. UNESCO has compiled a list of educational applications, platforms, and resources to support parents, teachers, and schools in facilitating student learning and social interaction during school closures. However, these solutions primarily focus on theoretical content transfer and lack support for hands-on laboratory work and practical experiences. Hands-on experiences are crucial for enhancing learning in all disciplines and especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, where continuous improvement of laboratories and pedagogical tools is necessary. While the creation of online accessible content and immersive lab experiences is beneficial in the short term during the COVID-19 crisis, it also has the potential for long-term adoption of innovative e-learning tools.

Project period: 2020 09 01 - 2023 05 31

Projekto No.: 2020-1-NO01-KA203-076540

„Erasmus+“ programa:  Strategic Partnerships in the field of higher education

Target group: lecturers, teachers

Project goal: to introduce a novel framework for e-Learning consisting of including haptic experiences to enable digital access to laboratories in higher education. This will be achieved by combining both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools with a novel generation of wearable haptic devices. This will make it possible to engage students in a hapto-audio-visual hands-on laboratory environment. In this project, we will evaluate which of the available haptic technologies are suitable for e-Lerning and may foster the student’s ability to create complex simulations using existing or in-world modeling techniques and scripting tools, while offering the functionality to link to the real world and capture data which can be visualised in real-time. Haptics, VR and AR tools will be adopted either from our ongoing research activity or from various low-cost commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) tools. In this way, an innovative educational and research loop will also be established. This approach will contribute towards the achievement of fully-immersive, open and distance laboratory learning.

Results:

  • Assessment tool >> for educators’ competencies evaluation on using VR/AR including wearable haptic technologies. We propose a self-assessment tool for educators’ competencies evaluation in VR and AR including haptic wearable technologies. This tool will support academic staff in taking responsibility for their own professional growth through the identification of the current status of their pedagogical and technological skills with respect to VR/AR and integrated haptic wearables. The proposed tool will make it possible to design tailor-made courses for educators.

  • Training program >> for educators on haptics, VR and AR competencies development (methodology and tools). We propose the design of a training program for educators regarding competence development and the adoption of haptics, VR and AR as tools for realising a hands-on laboratory with practical experiences for students. The development of the proposed training course for the integration of haptics, VR and AR for teaching is a novel methodological contribution toward supporting teacher competence development.

  • Open source library >> of VR, AR and wearable haptics to be used for re-designed study modules and engineering laboratories. 

 

Project partners:

  • University of Agder (Norway, project coordinator)

  • Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania)

  • Timisoara Polytechnic University (Romania)

  • University of Siena (Italy)

  • University of Minho (Portugal)

 

eMundus participates in the project as an associated partner responsible for project results dissemination to the target groups.

Project website: augmentedwearedu.uia.no