Learning Grammar and Vocabulary using GVScapes

GVScapes is an Android based mobile application which has mobilised the scavenger hunt learning activity using AR that included the (1) 3D-animation; and (2) location-based. These functions would allow the user to play educational quizzes using the built-in camera via their mobile phone. In the case of AR for GVScapes, the added graphic or image in the specific locations consisted of the  existing natural environment. Users would experience a new and improved world where virtual information was used as a tool to provide assistance in daily activities. GVScapes was developed as an alternative or to complement the existing conventional teaching and learning activities. The target users for this application were UMS lecturers and students because the locations in GVScapes are comprised of several locations in UMS. 

UMS lecturers and students could use their smartphones with the Android-based operating system. This android based mobile application were using C# and JavaScript in Unity software. The objects in GVScapes were created using the Unity software. While, the method for the maps to locate the hints using the AR location-based and features were anchored on real-time location. GVScapes is free and can be used anywhere using the Android based operation system.  

AR Technology

AR is a system that supplements the real world with virtual (computer-generated) objects that appear to coexist in the same space as the real world. The AR technology combines; (1) real and virtual objects in a real environment; (2) runs interactively and in real time; and (3) registers (aligns) real and virtual objects with each other (Feiner, McIntyre, Hollerer & Webster, 1997). The overlaid sensory information can be seamlessly interwoven with the physical world such that it is perceived as an immersive aspect of the real environment and can be constructive such as additive to the natural environment or destructive like overlay of the natural environment (Rosenberg, 1992). As such, AR is related to two largely terms which are mixed reality and computer-mediated reality. In education, AR has been used to complement the standard curriculum where text, graphics, video, and audio were added into a student’s real-time environment. Textbooks, flashcards and other educational reading materials may contain embedded “markers” or triggers that, when scanned by an AR device, produced supplementary information to the student rendered in a multimedia format (Adabala & Kaushik, 2016). In view of this, the infusion of AR technology could grab student’s attention and sustain meaningful learning as AR allowed mobilised learning and innovated the ways students interacted with the lessons contents.