AR Escape Room - Save the Whales

A collaborative class activity for middle schoolers that teaches them about empathy and their connection to the environment.

Courses:

Principles of Software Design for Learning (SI 548) for 1st iteration
Introduction to AR/VR Application Design (SI 559) for 2nd iteration

University of Michigan, Master of Science in Information

Design Process

Target audience: middle school students
Students guide a pod of whales to a habitable environment while avoiding dangerous situations
Escape room environment offers multiple different critical-thinking, collaborative challenges
AR can increase empathy that students feel for endangered species & help them feel more connected to environment
Domain: Survival-based escape room; students will guide a pod of whales to a habitable environment while avoiding dangerous situations
Context: Classroom aide; teacher integrates the technology into their classroom as a supplemental activity
Constraints: Technology requires AR-capable tablets (with camera in back)
Competitor analysis of AR for education
- Explored competitors currently in the space (Scriptum, Google 3D Animals, JigSpace) where AR is used for education
- Focused on gaps in current space: AR integrated into environment, lessons learned are clear after experience, and realistic depiction of objects
Ideation started with understanding the context & constraints of a typical middle school classroom
- Classrooms don’t contain much space, so life-size models should be scaled down
- Movement between stations should be limited to avoid chaos in classroom
- Student may not be able to hold a tablet for more than a few minutes at a time, so activities should be done with tablet on a table for majority of the time
Interactive Whale Tutorial
- 3D model teaches students about whales
- Interactive models allows students to explore at the pace of their curiosity
Echolocation Activity
- Markers (QR codes) are printed at stations
- Students move from station-to-station, using “echolocation” to find food and resources
Marker-based vs. markerless AR have different contexts of use. For middle school classrooms, marker-based AR can keep students involved at their tables without moving around to see a full-scale model, as might be the case with markerless AR. In addition, they’re able to manipulate the 3D virtual object.
Activities should be short to accommodate for student’s ability to hold a tablet for more than a few minutes.