Remote Hands-On Experience: Distributed Collaboration with Augmented Reality

One claim of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) is to support and exploit benefits from distance learning and remote collaboration. On the other hand, several approaches to learning emphasize the importance of handson experience. Unfortunately, these two goals don't go well together with traditional learning techniques. Even though TEL technologies can alleviate this problem, it is not sufficiently solved yet remote collaboration usually comes at the cost of losing direct hands-on access. The ARiSE project aimed at bringing Augmented Reality (AR) to School Environments, a technology that can potentially bridge the gap between the two goals mentioned. The project has designed, implemented and evaluated a pedagogical reference scenario where students worked hands-on together over large distances. This paper describes the AR learning approach we followed and discusses its implementation and its future potential. It shows a simple and successful distributed AR learning approach and suggests features for improvement.