Mathematics is a challenging subject for middle school students due to the introduction of concepts that are abstract and unrelatable in real world context. Emerging Augmented Reality (AR) technologies afford to visualize those abstract concepts integrated with the physical environment. Hence, we developed an AR app, MathReality, to teach the mathematics concept of exponents in more concrete ways and help them move from concrete to more abstract understanding of the concept. Preliminary results suggest the app was useful to the users and helped them learn the concept easily. This is a work-in-progress project and we are currently working on refining the design of the app and the assessment activities to conduct further studies.
Conference paper submitted to the 19th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies - ICALT 2019, Brazil.
Two earasers made as AR marker using sketch pen.
Screenshot of MathReality AR app, where the 2 erasers are augmented with 14 more erasers to show 24 into the physical environment.
In our work, we introduce a process where students make their own AR markers with day-to-day objects, they see around them like erasers, ice-cream sticks etc. These physical objects can be directly manipulated or duplicated in the physical environment to teach the students on the concept of exponents, which is supported by the research on use of concrete objects to teach mathematics. The app also introduces assessment activities which has interactive and visual scenario-based questions, to give formative feedback. This also acts as a bridge to connect with verbal questions (word problems) asked during school exams which are often represented in an abstract form.
The working prototype of the MathReality AR app is show below:
Kindly contact me if you are interested in this project. I could share the entire project report with you. Thank you!
