Leaders:
Ka Sin Cindy Lam (Environmental Science, School of Science, HKUST)
Chun Kwun Stanley Lau, (Division of Life Science, HKUST)
Shuk Ching Elza Tsang (Center for Language Education, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Member:
Wing Suet Zoe Yeung (Environmental Science, School of Science, HKUST)

Source of funding:
HKUST Teaching Development Grant

Summary:
This project develops a mobile app integrating augmented reality (AR) simulation aids with multi-modal learning resources to enhance students’ learning and their engagement in different learning activities of laboratory courses such as field trips, laboratory sessions and report writing. We select a laboratory course (LIFS 3330 Marine Biology Laboratory) as the pilot run to evaluate the effectiveness of the interactive mobile app and AR simulation in enhancing students’ engagement activities and instructors’ teaching performance.

Information available on the app can achieve multi purposes:
(i) increasing students’ understanding of course content;
(ii) stimulating students’ participation and communication in the course;
(iii) incorporating experiential learning in course group project;
(iv) providing access to useful English learning resources in a user-friendly way.

The key deliverables of the project include
(i) an interactive mobile app;
(ii) the template and source codes for the building of an educational app that are not only applicable to this laboratory course, but also transferrable to other science-related laboratory courses;
(iii) a bank of useful English e-learning materials such as web links, quizzes, text analyses and games;
(iv) an interactive field guide incorporating species identification using AR technology.

Our project takes the leading role to develop assessment tools using AR technology for HKUST students.