USING AUGMENTED REALITY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SRI LANKAN LEARNING APPROACH

Abstract

The Student-centered education system was introduced to the education system in Sri Lanka about Decade ago. Education authorities have implemented various programs to popularize this system into the Sri Lankan school system such as smart class room. Because Student-centered education system is the most powerful learning approach which promotes students’ visualization capability than the teacher- centered education system. However, even today schoolchildren and teachers in Sri Lanka tend to favour the teacher centralized education approach. But this Teacher-centered education approach reduces student’s thinking capability which is the main objective of the learning process. In this method student’s contribution for learning process is very low, by reason of students only aware of what their teachers given. In Teacher centered approach study materials are textbooks, workbooks, handled devices and other electronic devices which is low tech, those kind of learning materials have certain limitations, specially relating to issues of authenticity, context, immersion and practical application. Augmented Reality (AR) can be an excellent tool to address these shortcomings Augmented Reality assist the visualization and it facilitates the teaching process to teachers. However, this kind of technology needs costly equipment which is difficult to affordable. Hence in the present work attempted to mobile smartphone based simple application to improve the visualization of students, which is expected from student learning system. The selected application those evaluate with 40 students class room and results show satisfaction of the teacher as well as students. This is the easiest way to populate Augmented Reality among Sri Lankan education system to improve critical thinking of Sri Lankan students and practice them to “think outside of the box”.