Augmented Reality and its Applications in Education: A Systematic Survey

The use of technology, especially mobile phones, has significantly increased over the past few decades and has become an essential element in our daily lives. Mobile and desktop applications based on Augmented Reality (AR) proved to be a revolutionary step in different areas, especially in the educational sector. AR provides an improved and extended version of reality with the superimposition of a virtual object in the real-world environment. These objects can be interacted with and visualized in many ways to provide full AR experiences. By interacting with augmented virtual objects, students can visualize and completely understand various difficult concepts during their studies rather than traditional learning, allowing collaborative learning and hence improving learnability, motivation, and focus. This survey paper discusses the concept of AR and its types, the need for AR applications in education, analysis of various state-of-the-art AR applications in terms of platform, augmented virtual content, interactions, usability, usefulness, performance, effectiveness, and ease-of-use under a single taxonomy. Although applications of AR in education for learning, teaching, and simulating have proven quite effective in delivering the concepts via interactive study, there are also several limitations in terms of complexity and availability of hardware, platforms, internet connections, portability, computational, and rendering speed. This study offers insights into potential trends and directions that AR technology might take in education, furnishing readers with a glimpse of forthcoming developments. This comprehensive perspective equips educators, researchers, and practitioners with valuable insights into the pedagogical implications, technological aspects, and practical considerations related to AR.