Impact of Augmented Reality as an ICT tool to Deliver Engineering Education Content

Augmented reality has found itself as an excellent candidate to deliver content for education. There is a definite need for improved visualization when it comes to Engineering education. AR could present itself as a good candidate to do so. This paper presents the use of Augmented Reality for engineering education. The need for visualization finds itself at the core of imparting Engineering education and there are various platforms to do so. We continue the work presented in an earlier publication where we have implemented our smartbooks concept for delivering an engaging AR experience. We have presented the use of AR for delivering content for three fundamental engineering subjects: Engineering mechanics, engineering drawing and electrical engineering. We have also explored a different user interface to improve our AR content delivery. Examples for each are demonstrated and so are their use cases. Measuring the impact of using AR was a particular challenge with variable usage across students. We have defined certain metrics (engagement factor) that help us correlate usage with impact. We have measured the impact of our AR implementation through well designed questionnaires, and used the academic scores of the candidates as an output metric to measure impact. The objective of this research is to present a case for the use of AR in being a front-runner ICT technology for delivering engineering education.