ScholAR: A Collaborative Learning Experience for Rural Schools Using Augmented Reality Application

Collaborative learning involves working in groups to solve a problem or perform a task. Collaborative learning is often encouraged in rural schools as due to lack of space and infrastructure, students are made to sit on floors and taught together within and between groups. Evidently, in rural schools, technologies have been introduced to support the existing teaching methods. Augmented Reality is one such technology that can provide a collaborative interactive experience. In our study, we provided an AR based application named 'ScholAR' to experimental group of 16 students of 7th grade as at that age they cultivate the ability to reason logically and develop conceptualizing skills. The application involved six tasks on the Mathematics topic of Introduction to 3D Solids targeted to enhance the spatial visualization skills of the students. We did a comparative study with the control group of 16 students who were taught the same topic using physical 3D models and the usual teaching method followed in their school. We report the results of this study, observations and analysis of the use of this AR application in a collaborative environment and the effect of collaboratively using the AR application on the students' performance.