Support of temporal change observation using augmented reality for learning

Abstract

An augmented reality (AR) technology enables to show an additional information by superimposing virtual objects onto the real world. The AR technology is gradually used in the learning environment for observing unseeable objects. Observation is the important process of inspecting a target object with significant details. It forms the basic of all scientific knowledge in education. However, there are only few AR applications which can visualize the temporal changes of the objects. In addition, the effect of this temporal change visualization by AR is not investigated from a scientific aspect. In this study, in order to clarify the effect of temporal change visualization by AR, we have compared the AR-based temporal change visualization method with the conventional temporal change visualization methods in the experiment. Especially, we set an observation of the plant growth as a practical scenario. Through the experiment, we have confirmed that superimpose the past appearance onto the user's viewpoint is effective for temporal change observation scenario. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.