Augmented reality game improves information retention: study

SINGAPORE: Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) say some students taking part in a trial have shown an improvement in retaining information after playing an iPad—based game.

They said a group of 36 Secondary One students from Outram Secondary School showed a 22 per cent improvement in learning outcomes after the game.

The game, based on a chapter in the Secondary One History syllabus, makes use of augmented reality (AR) to bring history to life for students.

The game, "The Jackson Plan", is named after Sir Stamford Raffles’s town planner Lieutenant Philip Jackson.

His plan of the Singapore River in 1822 forms the game’s storyline.

Raymond Koh, research designer at Keio—NUS Connective Ubiquitous Technology and Embodiments (CUTE) Center said: "Lieutenant Jackson actually designed a segregation plan for the population of immigrants. And we looked at the sort of activities that these people did at the time to motivate narrative and game structure."

Under the trial, students were shown a fragment of the map of old Boat Quay.

Their task was to find the missing pieces of the map.

"They have to learn to analyse, to organise all the information so that they can find out who is the one who stole the map," said Deidra Wong, social science researcher (education) at NUS.

Along the way, students learn more about history with the help of AR.

"AR is basically representing virtual content in physical spaces. So you can interact with these sort of information in real time," said Mr Koh.

Talks are already underway for a licensing agreement to use "The Jackson Plan" as a supplement for students.

Dr Henry Duh, co—director of Keio—NUS CUTE Center said: "Since the project is quite successful and it proves to be quite effective, we hope we can work with other schools to roll out and deploy such mobile AR education tools and to help the students to learn about their neighbourhoods and engage them in their community."

Designers and researchers at the Keio—NUS CUTE Center took three—and—a—half months to come up with the game.

— CNA/xq