Abstract:

The research is framed in the field of Augmented Digital Representation of geometric shapes applied to university education for teaching geometry. Drawing is a primary subject in higher schools and universities. It allows students to understand tools and methods to represent any shapes in the plane and space, an essential training to face any project path related to architecture, engineering, and design. The introduction of Augmented Reality (AR) into the curriculum brings about a clear advancement in knowledge, merging representation in the plane with representation in space. Furthermore, AR generates an innovative synergic correlation between orthogonal and perspective projections, two representations methods that are distant from an executive and cognitive point of view, preserving their meaning and stressing their communicative capacities. Finally, the suggestion of AR visualization in this field allows the student to be involved in understanding the shapes, introducing a personalization of the educational path. The research aims to define an innovative, interactive, inclusive, and engaging teaching method that simplifies specific cognitive processes in teaching the subject.

The issues developed by the project, related to the use of AR with mobile systems for educational purposes, are well established at a scientific level. Many types of research are published in the leading journals of the EdTech sector. Besides, two aspects of the research must be mentioned in state of the art. The first is Augmented Reality for teaching geometry and architecture. One example is the "Construct3D" project (Kaufmann & Schmalstieg, 2003) developed from 1999 to 2008 by the TU Vienna. It focused on the interactive and collaborative generation of surfaces, solids, and intersections in real time through AR and VR. The second aspect is interactive Augmented Reality, understood as the possibility of increasing the level of interaction between the user and the 3D model through real-time updating of transformations. In this direction, the literature review proposed by (Murat & Akçayir, 2017) analyses a series of research works addressing this issue in different learning contexts, highlighting merits and shortcomings related to the use of AR.

This research proposal will experiment with some specific courses within Sapienza University. However, it can be a scalable proposal that can be applied to any field in which 3D representation is an instrument for understanding content or functional processes.

References:
[1] Kaufmann, Hannes and Dieter Schmalstieg. “Mathematics and geometry education with collaborative augmented reality.”Computers & Graphics 27 (3) (2003): 339-345. Elsevier
[2] Akçayir, Murat, and Gökçe Akçayir. "Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: A systematic review of the literature." Educational Research Review 20 (2017): 1-11. Elsevier

Keywords:

Augmented Reality, Geometric Shapes, Interactive representations, Engaging visualization.