Abstract:

In recent years, information technologies and networks have flourished and new Augmented Really (AR) applications have gradually appeared in learning settings and our lives also to bring different aspects of learning and enrich our lives. Because the AR features could deliver multimedia information to connect historical events transcending time and space, thus nowadays it affords us to access a variety of vivid information anytime, anywhere through smartphones and networks in the just-a-time manner. Moreover, studies have pointed out that AR, if well-designed, could enhance the informal learning experiences or bring new learning chances that wouldn’t be possible before. By taking the advantages of AR indicated above, we’d like to design and implement an AR tour-guide system to support just-in-time learning to enhance digital humanity of a significant location called Mei Garden, built to commemorate the first president of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Dr. Yi-Qi, Mei, a highly respected scholar and educator between China and Taiwan. Mei Garden features its ecology, humanities and history. Thus it’s not only the mausoleum of the president of both Tsing Hua Universities across Taiwan Strait, but also full of evergreen pines, and plums in the garden and many unique buildings, such as “Yue-Han Pavilion” and “Mei Pavilion”, having become a unique momentum in higher education in Taiwan. However, since Mei Garden was built long time ago with very limited on-site information, to date, most of the visitors couldn’t know the significance of this garden well. To address this issue, we aim to construct the Mei Garden AR tour-guide system hoping to meet the needs of the digital humanities of Mei Garden via just-in-time learning.

To better build this system to meet the expectations of the target uses, the needs analysis survey was conducted. The questionnaires mainly include three parts, basic information of Mei Garden, “digital Mei Garden system” and design of the “mobile guide system”. Totally 261 valid online questionnaires were collected in two weeks. The results indicate 95% of participants who filled in are the students, professors, and employees of NTHU, their major age ranging between 20 and 30 years old (86.6%). 90.4% know Mei Garden was built to commemorate the president Mei, but half of them don’t know the unique features of Mei Garden. 41.8% want to know the history background of Mei Garden, and 36% want to know the flowering time of the garden. In addition, 70% wanting to know more about the special building and scenes of Mei Garden. In other words, they think each special building and scenes are important to Mei Garden, and they want to know the information of the garden. Importantly, 99.2% want to use an avatar as a tour guide while they use this system, and expect it is the mascot of NTHU--panda (60.9%). They hope it will lead them and orally present the historical stories while they’re visiting Mei Garden. In addition to historical stories, moreover, they also expect to interact with the virtual plum trees, and could play games while they’re visiting the Mei Garden using this system.

In summary, the results of the needs analysis provide us rich and useful information about the tourists’ experiences and their exceptions for the AR tour-guide system. It’ll be very helpful for us. Currently we’re working on the systems development to meet the users’ expectations and hope we’ll present the significant systems in the near future.

Keywords:

Augmented reality guide system, just-in-time learning, Mei Garden, mobile learning, needs analysis.