Mobile Educational Augmented Reality Games: A Systematic Literature Review and Two Case Studies

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) has evolved from research projects into mainstream applications that cover diverse fields, such as entertainment, health, business, tourism and education. In particular, AR games, such as Pokémon Go, have contributed to introducing the AR technology to the general public. The proliferation of modern smartphones and tablets with large screens, cameras, and high processing power has ushered in mobile AR applications that can provide context-sensitive content to users whilst freeing them to explore the context. To avoid ambiguity, I define mobile AR as a type of AR where a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) is used to display and interact with virtual content that is overlaid on top of a real-time camera feed of the real world. Beyond being mere entertainment, AR and games have been shown to possess significant affordances for learning. Although previous research has done a decent job of reviewing research on educational AR applications, I identified a need for a comprehensive review on research related to educational mobile AR games (EMARGs). This paper explored the research landscape on EMARGs over the period 2012-2017 through a systematic literature review complemented by two case studies in which the author participated. After a comprehensive literature search and filtering, I analyzed 31 EMARGs from the perspectives of technology, pedagogy, and gaming. Moreover, I presented an analysis of 26 AR platforms that can be used to create mobile AR applications. I then discussed the results in depth and synthesized my interpretations into 13 guidelines for future EMARG developers.

User Experience in Mobile Augmented Reality: Emotions, Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices

“…In fact, there even exist AR toolkits (e.g., ARIS, Augment, Aurasma, Blibbar and Layar) that enable the creation of full MAR experiences without programming skills [3]. Consequently, in the wake of the success of Pokémon Go, the number of published MAR applications is soaring, but research is needed to determine to what extent they engage users emotionally.…”

“…The interaction in the first and second case studies was based on a touch-based user interface, which is a typical approach in MAR applications [3]. Table 6.…”

“…These applications brought MAR to people's smartphones in earnest, especially targeting kids and youth. Moreover, the increase in the number of toolkits for creating MAR applications has enabled even non-technical individuals to create their own MAR content [3], thus further strengthening the position of MAR as a mainstream interaction technology.…”

“…This combination of the real world and the virtual world has been harnessed for various purposes, such as marketing, education, entertainment and health care. For example, AR has been used for educational and training purposes across subject areas both in formal and informal settings [3][4][5][6][7][8], and it has been shown to possess a multitude of affordances for learning and training scenarios [7][8][9][10][11]. Despite these success stories, AR (and mobile AR in particular) has not yet fulfilled a previously made prediction of becoming the eighth mass media [12].…”

“…As in our earlier work [3], MAR is defined here as "a type of AR where a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) is used to display and interact with virtual content that are overlaid on top of a real-time camera feed of the real world". Virtual content in MAR applications can be context-sensitive and take various forms including, but not limited to three-dimensional (3D) models, animations, annotations and videos.…”