An Educational Augmented Reality Application for Elementary School Students Focusing on the Human Skeletal System

Augmented Reality (AR) as a new field regarding Human Computing Interaction (HCI) has been gaining momentum in the last few years. Being able to project interactive graphics into real-life environments can be applied in various fields, research and commercial goals. In the field of education, textbooks are still considered to be the primary tool used by students to learn about new topics. Since AR requires interaction and exploration, it brings a ludic component that is hard to replicate using regular textbooks. The application we developed allows elementary school students to interact with a fully three-dimensional human skeleton model, using specialized virtual buttons. Students can understand this complex structure and learn the names of important bones just by using a tablet, a picture and their hands. Results show that the majority of students consider that our AR application helped them visualize and learn more about the human skeletal system. Additionally, the data we gathered shows that there was a 16% increase in correct responses regarding bone names after using our AR application. Our AR application successfully helped the students learn about the human skeletal system by introducing them to AR technologies.