Augmented reality based interactive table-top environment for real-time visualization of control theory concepts: An empirical study

Student perception is an essential component in education; especially in engineering courses, which involve complex spatial processes, manipulation and interpretation of graphs, diagrams, and concepts. Incorporation of special training instructions improve spatial skills of learners, assisting them to acquire enhanced conceptual knowledge. Through this paper, concept validation of using immersive and interactive technology to attain better understanding of engineering fundamentals is presented. An Augmented Reality (AR) based Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) was developed for engineering undergraduates. Students were pre- and post-tested for technical knowledge through well-defined questionnaire and were administered different instructional treatments; viz. traditional teaching (control group) and ILE-based teaching (treatment group), for topics from control theory. Results of an empirical study indicate that students who were instructed through ILE scored more as they acquired similar perception through interactive visualization, thereby validating the use of AR for educational settings. By utilizing interactive 2D (2-dimensional) simulations, the research work ensures that 3D (3-dimensional) models developed to demonstrate theoretical topics using AR would also be feasible for implementation in classroom environments. The findings of this work instantiate a correlation between the role of interactive visualization and student’s learning for future studies.