4 creative AR ideas for teachers and trainers

After gaining much popularity specially over the last couple of years, AR today spans vast areas of application, providing innovative solutions for myriad sectors. In particular, the training and education market has been profiting immensely from the forward-looking opportunities AR opens up. Read on to find out more about how AR has been transforming the educational landscape and how you, as an educator or trainer, can easily integrate this leading-edge technology into your everyday work.

AR captures the training and education market

Broadly speaking, Augmented Reality (AR) lets you superimpose digital content on a real-world environment.

Never before has it been so easy to visualize content, making complex topics more digestible. Innumerable AR learning apps have taken the education market by storm and are now helping learners across the globe to reach their study goals with less effort and more fun.

This development is also reflected in this year’s education and training market research report published by The Business Research Company: While the global value of AR in training and education grew from $6.42 billion in 2021 to $10.63 billion in 2022, it’s expected to reach a stunning $69.01 billion in 2026.

The power of WebAR for educators and trainers

As a teacher or trainer, you might at times find it hard to choose a great education tool that’s both readily accessible and effective in its application.

You’ll be happy to hear that with WebAR, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

In contrast to learning apps, WebAR empowers educators and trainers to take AR content creation into their own hands, and offers them limitless choices to spice up their own study materials and lessons, all in a matter of minutes.

Our in-house developed WebAR platform SQUARS, for example, provides a fully browser-based AR content creation software that doesn’t require any native app to create or view your personal AR experience. All that learners need to view the immersive experience is a phone with a built-in camera and access to the Internet.

The benefits of AR in education and training

Before we dive into some actual AR use cases, let’s first have a look at the vast array of benefits that come with augmenting the learning experience of students and trainees.

It’s beyond debate that we live in a time marked by increasingly short attention spans, as we are permanently exposed to a constant and, at times, overwhelming influx of information derived from the Internet.

This development is not bad per se, but it certainly requires adjustment on any teacher’s end. Arguably one of the biggest challenges for today’s educators is to make sure their teaching techniques and materials can keep up with the technological reality we live in.

This is where AR comes in, as it allows educators to keep their finger on the pulse of technological progress and, at the same time, provide a highly effective learning environment.

To give you an overview of why integrating creative AR ideas into your teaching or training sessions will be a game changer, here’s a list of the most significant benefits that come with it:

• More interesting & engaging study material
• Improved interactivity between everyone involved in the learning process
• Steeper learning curve
• Better understanding of information through visualization of complex topics
• Enhanced concentration & memory retention
• Ownership passed on to learners (inductive rather than deductive learning)

4 creative AR education ideas for teachers and trainers

If your daily work is that of a teacher or trainer, you have, at some point, probably asked yourself how to handle the fact that your students’ life is basically centered around their smartphones. Even amongst our youngest generation, there’s hardly a child who’s not permanently glued to their phone in their free time.

Instead of fighting a hopeless battle against this situation, why not use it to your advantage, providing immersive AR experiences to your students and trainees through their phones?

Here are 4 creative AR application ideas educators and trainers can easily integrate into their daily routine:

1. Enhance your own worksheets with elements of gamification

Imagine the following scenario: You’ve put much effort into putting together a beautifully structured and visually appealing worksheet for your next lesson and can’t wait to hand it out in class, but shortly after your lesson ends, you find out that most copies of your worksheet have been tossed away, never to be looked at again.

Let’s change that! With SQUARS’ WebAR editor, you can easily turn every worksheet into an exciting immersive experience your students will fall in love with and think twice before committing it to the bin. Simply print a scannable QR code on the sheet, or overlay an image or even the entire worksheet with gripping AR content.

Here are some AR application ideas for various subjects:

• History teachers might add digital 3D images of a Roman soldier, gladiator, or historical objects
• Science teachers may want to visualize the looks of a human heart, a chemical compound, a DC or AC system, etc.
• Language teachers can add images to newly introduced vocabulary to make learning more fun and specifically cater to the visual learners
• Art teachers can add a digital version of a painting for creative inspiration

In the end, there’re as many use cases as your imagination allows. If you're an online-trainer, for example, simply add the AR experience to your digital PowerPoint slides instead to make your lessons more engaging and interactive.

2. Use AR when testing your students to boost their courage

Don’t we all have those unpleasant memories from our own school days back in the day when we were put on the spot in front of the entire class, having to review the topics from the previous lesson?

Adding an AR element to such frightening events can go a long way toward loosening up the pent-up tension and establishing a classroom environment that makes your students feel relaxed and self-confident.

For instance, instead of making your students list all parts of a human organ by heart and without context, use AR to visualize the organ for them and help them stay focused.

Your students will for sure be happy about this gamified approach of yours and will hopefully reward your efforts by putting their shoulders to the wheel themselves when preparing for your lessons in the future.

3. Create a fun and interactive AR experience for your in-class project work

WebAR is the perfect means for project work in any teaching environment.

Disrupt the dull day-to-day school life by making your students move around the classroom and discover the content you’ve imbedded inside QR codes spread around the room.

Inside the QR codes, you may hide digital instructions for various tasks, integrate interactive buttons that will forward your students to a certain URL with relevant information for their tasks, or go above and beyond, turning the whole project into a timed quiz rally to ignite the competitive spirit of all participants.

Apart from keeping your students more engaged with the topic at hand, AR-enriched project work can greatly foster teamwork and coordination skills. While your students are busy moving around and working off the tasks you’ve prepared for them, you can assume the role of a guide, which will give you more control over the classroom situation.

Students are usually genuinely thankful for teachers who adopt an out-of-the-box thinking and go to great lengths to provide new and exciting in-class learning experiences.

4. Visualize abstract and complex concepts with AR content

Every math teacher can probably tell you a thing or two about this: The more complex a topic or geometrical figure is the more difficult it is to get your students to understand it.

Especially in mathematics, abstract problems are oftentimes formulated in strenuous text form students can easily lose themselves in.

AR can be of great help here, as it functions as an excellent means of visualization that can make life considerably easier for your students and yourself.

Next time you introduce a new geometrical form to your students, simply bring an AR version of it to class and let your students examine it thoroughly on their own phones, and from all angles.

Your students will thank you for this, and preparing the AR experience really doesn’t take long - with SQUARS Studio, you can create any digital shape or form in a matter of seconds.

Prepare your own immersive teaching content with SQUARS

Can’t wait to start creating your first educational AR content right away? Try out SQUARS’ free plan!

Sign up today and use AR in your lessons tomorrow.