This work proposes a mobile augmented reality system to improve Mexican secondary education, allowing students to access additional educational contents related to their textbooks. Our application recognize the augmented tags in the book and shows multimedia contents to complement the topics covered in the class. Usability testing of our augmented reality system showed a high user satisfaction.

1. Augmented education: an opportunity for digital
inclusion on Mexican secondary schools

Pedro Santana, Celso Juárez and Martha Magaña

2. Introduction

Support Mexican secondary education to
improve the students textbooks.


Better understanding.
Bring technology to the ordinary classroom
(beyond the computing laboratory).

3.  So,
we went into a secondary
school for a context study.

4. Gathering preliminary context
 Interviews
in a public secondary
school.


Knowledge about mobile phones and how
they use them.
Subjects: 30, ten for each grade, randomly
chosen.

5. Students
Results on preliminary context
20
15
10
5
0
78%
100%
12
12
Boys
18
14
Girls
86% of the total students owns a cell phone

6. Results on preliminary context
Time using a cellphone
8%
42%
Less than a year
50%
One to two years

7. Envisioned system

Support different devices.


Easy of use.


Android.
Usability tests.
The content was designed based on Unit
5 from the book “Historia I de Segundo
Grado”.

8. Technical stuff

9. Prototype (3D model, video, audio)

10. Preliminary usability testing

5 participants (pilot test on laboratory).






2 females.
3 males.
Average of 12 years old.
They previously had studied the textbook.
All participants had previous experience with
smartphones.
1 hour session.

11. The session and preliminary results
Pre-questionnaire to measure previous
knowledge.
1.
1.
7.9/10
Show and explain the system.
Hands on the prototype.
2.
3.
1.
Students were very surprised and remained
focused until all the content was played.
Post-questionnaire.
4.
1.
9.4/10
Usability score ranking from 1(very poor) to 10
(excellent).
5.
1.
97%

12. Evaluation

After the preliminary evaluation, we noticed that in
order to have a better context of the interaction with
the system and observe the reactions of the
learners, we needed to go directly to the classrooms.

13. Participants



Secondary School Number 1 at the city of Colima.
1 history teacher.
29 students.





52% male.
48% female.
Average age of 13 years old.
28% of the learners dislike the History class.
76% are users of cellphones.

14. Results

Preferred augmented content



79% the 3D model.
21% the video.
While 38% indicated having problems with audio
content, mainly because the noise in the classroom.

15. 
“Would you believe the use of this software will
improve your learning?”


62% of the children believe the software will improve their
learning.
Some of the related comments are:





“I would learn more about technology”.
“I learn more”.
“Brings me more information”.
“Using technology is more fun”.
“I do not believe this software will improve my
learning because I would be fascinated with it”.

16. The teacher

The opinions of the teacher were very
positive, mentioned that she is very interested on
using the system in her classes and she wants to call
us to participate in the regular classes when she is
teaching these subjects.

17. Conclusions



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

We described a mobile augmented reality
Results suggest that AR applications can strongly
improve secondary education in Mexico.
Our AR app was well received by the students and
teacher.
The system would provide a richer mechanism to
complement lecture contents.
Although nowadays not all students in middle school
are able to access smartphones, these conditions are
likely to change as the background study indicates and
the prices of the smartphones continue dropping.
As a general conclusion we can say that the use of
mobile phones as a platform to deploy augmented
reality applications for education is adequate.

18. Thank you :)
Augmented Education: an Opportunity for Digital Inclusion on
Mexican Secondary Schools
Pedro Santana, Celso Juárez and Martha Magaña