Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to create compelling learning experiences. However, there are few research works exploring the design and evaluation of AR for educational settings. In our research, we treat AR as a type of multimedia that is situated in authentic environments and apply multimedia learning theory as a framework for developing our educational applications. We share our experiences in developing a handheld AR system and one specific use case, namely, situated vocabulary learning. Results of our evaluations show that we are able to create AR applications with good system usability. More importantly, our preliminary evaluations show that AR may lead to better retention of words and improve student attention and satisfaction.

We propose a see-through vision with augmented reality (AR) for increasing the quality of the experiences in the activities of sightseeing. In the sightseeing activities, there are certain temporal and spatial limitations when sightseers are gazing on the real objects. In this research, we aim to eliminate the spatial limitations caused by the inability to see farther objects through opaque surfaces by using see-through vision technology with alpha blending, and to make the appearance of the target objects with 3D effect based on parallax effect. We focus on the platform of handheld devices that provides AR experiences with high accurate alignment of virtual objects on pre-captured real scene images based on cube mapping method. This paper describes the engineering methodology that we have used to develop our prototype system and the implementation of the prototype system for confirming our approach. The results about how the prototype system performs on a real site are reported in this paper.

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