Engagement Overload: Using Augmented Reality to Promote Student Interest in Computing

Educators face many challenges when incorporating engaging elements into their computing courses. One approach is to leverage emerging paradigms that draw interest not only from their novelty but their relevance to daily life. Augmented Reality (AR) is a nascent field of computing in which virtual artifacts are embedded into the physical world in real time, providing users with new ways to visualize and interact within their environment. Further, it contains many elements that have been shown to be engaging in the classroom, such as mobile devices, 3D media, graphics and image processing. Students are often curious about how such technology is developed, yet in years past, there were significant barriers to creating even simple AR systems. Technological advancements are now emerging in mobile computing that lower these barriers, requiring a re-examination of the role of AR in computing education. Though not the first undergraduate course in AR, this work discusses a pilot course in augmented reality intended to foster interest in computing as well as strengthen development skills. Course design and implementation are discussed, as well as challenges that emerged throughout the semester and how they were overcome. The enrollment of the course was purposely restricted in size, yet contained a cross-cut of the disciplines, including majors from computer science and computer game development. This work discusses how the diverse skillsets and backgrounds of a varied student population were addressed and showcases two representative student projects. This work also discusses the results of two surveys on student perceptions of a course in AR under the hypothesis that, because AR encompasses several elements shown to be engaging in the classroom, students would perceive AR as highly engaging. The first survey was administered to students who participated in the course, while the second was given to the general computing population within SPSU. The goal of the survey is to help educators make informed course decisions using the data collected.