Keywords

1 Introduction

In modern commercial community, new technologies and concepts constantly overturn old ones, and this tendency is the way that advanced human civilization must pass in the context of information technology. Today, thoughts and technologies in the field of man-machine interaction are ever-evolving, so survival and development of the education sector also experiences great changes. The education sector constantly integrates with other sectors, gradually generating three development stages: offline teaching platform, online education platform, online-offline education platform. With great vitality, offline education is relatively traditional and mature and is mainly operated by some mature organizations. Relying on new technology, online education platform grows rapidly and attracts investment from various sectors, and the industry calls the year of 2013 as the first year of Chinese online education. While online-offline education platform is a non-negligible growing trend in the education sector, and is an innovative attempt made by education researchers and frontline education practitioners to make the advantages of intellectual technology and traditional teaching method complementary to each other. These three development models all have their advantages and meanings of existence, equally important and mutually complementary.

By proposing the concept of “AR+Internet” education cloud platform (Chapter Two), the article explains this online-offline education platform, takes “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform as the specific case and tries to summarize and analyze information architecture (Chapter Four) of this platform, and lastly it explains the ecological strategy (Chapter Five) of “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform.

2 The Proposal of the Concept of “AR+Internet” Education Cloud Platform

Augmented reality (AR) is a new technology evolved from virtual reality technology, and it presents multimedia information such as corresponding text, image and 3D object through cameras and angular position discrimination and presents virtual space image and the real world on the same screen based on computer display and interaction and network technologies like tracking and locating, achieving seamless connection between virtual world and real world. Augmented reality technology is a supplement to the real world and is to augment people’s experience of the real world visually, auditorily, and tactilely. Hence, augmented reality is “augmented” experience in reality rather than an alternative reality. Augmented reality has three major features, namely combination of virtuality and reality, real-time interaction and 3D registering.

Augmented reality technology shows brilliant prospects for application in the fields of industry, medicine, military affairs, municipal administration, television, game, exhibition and more. For example, in the educational field, augmented reality can present students holographic image, virtual experiment, virtual environment and so forth; in the tourist industry, augmented reality can help tourists visit the scenic spot by themselves and explain them general situation of scenic spot, tourist route, development history, cultural landscape and other contents in the form of virtual image; in the retail industry, augmented reality technology allows one-click try-on and one-click home decoration and using AR technology in advertising may produce unexpected effects, hence it has great room for application in marketing and publicity.

“Internet+” is a new type of business of Internet development under Innovation 2.0 (an innovative form in the information era and the intellectual society). In the 3rd Session of the 12th National People’s Congress on March 5, 2015, Premier Li Keqiang first proposed “Internet+” action plan in the report on the work of the government, to advance the combination of things like mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and Internet of Things with modern manufacturing industry, to promote healthy growth of e-commerce, industrial Internet and Internet finance, and to guide Internet companies in expanding international market. Therefore, under the national strategy “Internet+”, numerous industries will be integrated with the Internet, thus giving mobile Internet broader room for application.

The application of cloud computing to the field of education is called “education cloud”, which brings teaching research a strong impetus. By analyzing the needs of its users such as school teachers and students and using service models of cloud computing technology and cloud computing, education cloud platform integrates traditional digital educational resources through virtual cloud management system to meet their needs. Education cloud platform is the infrastructure of future education informationization, and it contains hardware computing resources needed by education informationization. After virtualizing these resources, the platform collects all educational resources, abandons information isolated islands, and provides different user needs with corresponding services and relevant stakeholders with a fast, efficient and personalized teaching environment platform.

The proposal of the concept of “AR+Internet” education cloud platform is a product of the field of technology-empowered education in the context of the information technology era. As the “AR+Internet” concept has been proposed, AR can be incorporated into the Internet domain and applied into the education industry. Combining Internet thinking, it is able to promote AR technique, collect cloud data and realize cloud computing eventually, so as to make it possible for “Edu+AR” education cloud platform construction. Cloud data drives operation; basic functions are free of charge, while value-added services charge fees; rapid iteration and real-time feedback are typical of Internet thinking as well as the basic building strategy of “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform. In short, the concept of “AR+Internet” education cloud platform is a practical application of AR technology in the field of education by using Internet thinking with cloud platform as the carrier, and the model of “AR+Internet” can promote the all-round upgrade of education cloud platform.

3 The Application of “AR+Internet” to Skills Training of Vocational Education

3.1 The Application of AR Technology to Teaching

AR technology visualizes abstract learning content, improves learners’ sense of presence, intuition and degree of concentration, and enhances their ability to perceive real scenario visually. Therefore, this technology is often used for imitating objects to learn and for allowing learners to see virtually generated model in the real environment, and the model can be generated fast, controlled and rotated and can build a space for independent exploration for learners in the form closest to natural interaction, inspire learners in understanding abstract content teaching, and increase learners’ interest. For example, a headset-based virtual reality education game developed by Chan and Leung et al. can help learners practice dancing skills, learners can practice dancing by imitating the movements of virtual teachers, who provide learners with feedback and correction timely through motion capture technology. Li, Shen, Wang, Liu and Cai implemented utilized AR technology to imitate classic coin tossing experiment among knowledge points of probability in secondary school mathematics. The more times coin has been tossed, the probability of occurrence of two sides is closer to 50% respectively. Since age is different, main subjects are different and interactive experience are different, so the application of AR technology to teaching is highly extensive and is of some reference value.

3.2 The Differences Between AR Technology and “AR+Internet” in Their Application to Teaching

But teaching method of “AR+Internet” is different from that of simply using AR technology, as the latter is a part of the former. Teaching activity which uses AR technology is a special service provided by “AR+Internet” education cloud platform, while “AR+Internet” education cloud platform has deeper functions, structure and system. Next the author will focus on discussing the application of “AR+Internet” model to vocational education and skills training, to argue points of difference of teaching method of “AR+Internet”, thus explaining the complexity of teaching cloud platform of “AR+Internet” and paving the way for explaining the ecological strategy of “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform theoretically and empirically.

3.3 Concept and Characteristics of Vocational Education

Vocational education is a kind of employability education aiming at occupations and job activities, whose prominent feature is engaging in practical education and teaching of techniques, know-hows, artistries, skills and so on. Lots of teaching contents are practical, but they are restricted by factors such as environment, venue, facility and equipment, in a manner of speaking, the application of AR technology to vocational education is a rigid demand. Hence, augmented reality technology can be applied broadly in the field of education for modern occupations and can help learners operate and experiment three dimensionally in terms of experimental authenticity. Moreover, for skills training, with action bars, learners are able to practice programmed skills repeatedly, which improves the repeatability of experimental tool and is of universality, validity and urgency.

3.4 The Application of “AR+Internet” to Vocational Education

The application of “AR+Internet” to skills training of vocational education is a typical representative of online-offline teaching platform. By combining mobile device (handheld device) and paper books, AR technology is sued to demonstrate multimedia information like video and 3D model preinstalled by teaching content providers (developers, schools, and teachers) online, allowing people to acquire more visualized information while reading paper teaching materials offline, helping understand and spread knowledge, and truly realizing the combination of the offline and the online.

In the process of teaching, one motivates trigger point (trigger point largely is natural image recognition, with QR code recognition and bar code recognition as complements) by using the camera of a mobile terminal to scan the image in the teaching to acquire animation resources of corresponding key and difficult points in AR teaching material. Information on characteristics of natural image, QR code and so on are stored in image recognition module through Surf algorithm, and the corresponding recognition module will acquire and push matched resources in resource module and test module to the mobile application of students for learners to learn and evaluate. Teachers are able to customize their study data bank and update teaching resources online, while students can download the latest teaching content through the mobile application in real-time. The form of teaching content focuses on AR teaching material, together with 4D recognition card, AR game, AR modeling and other teaching forms. Relatively mature and complete AR teaching materials should also perform the functions of examination and assessment, for instance, using record operation and AR game (track) to judge whether operator (students) has remembered behavior route; evaluating operator’s learning outcome by accuracy and standardability of interactive operation of the operator; using accuracy of operating of operator in courseware to judge whether the operator has mastered this skill, and teachers can adjust teaching content according to operator’s mastery to reach the teaching objectives of vocational education.

4 Case Study: The Information Architecture of “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform

“Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform is an actual project about the application of “AR+Internet” to vocational education and teaching conducted by the author. If “AR+Internet” is to improve the model of applying AR technology to teaching, then “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform is a distillation of “AR+Internet” and is a platform which integrates and perfects it into an ecosystem.

At the macro level, “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform consists of student, teacher, teaching material modules and teaching management module with mobile terminal and PC as the carriers. Teaching material module has all contents about teaching including physical textbook, AR model, courseware file, courseware image, courseware video, AR game, and question tank. Teaching management module has data about the mastery of students including user system (which are administrators, teachers and students respectively), log module, monitoring module and test module. At the micro level, teaching activities on “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform can be mainly divided into three types-role-based methods, location-based methods and task-based methods. Among them the former two focus on the design of teaching activity and emphasize formal expression of behaviors of learners. The third type focuses on the presentation of teaching objects and stresses scenario and demonstration and man-machine interaction. The ecological relationships between each modules of “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform, corresponding cases and its information architecture will be detailed in the following chapters.

“Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform is an augmented reality-driven cloud technology application platform which is applied to the education sector and closely revolves around educational managers, researchers, teachers, students and the public. “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform is made up of five parts, which are:

Rich media: add the function of linking image, file, video, 3D visualization, interactive game, and instructional media to virtual simulation system, namely “screen simulation courseware which can link rich media teaching”. This courseware visualizes and pictorializes abstract learning contents to enhance learners’ sense of presence, intuition and degree of concentration, and to strengthen their ability to perceive realistic situation visually. Figure 1 is the website’s interface when teacher is uploading courseware, and curriculum resources are in various forms including 3D model, image, text and video.

figure 1

Fig. 1.

Cloud Resources: Cloud Resources is a form of cloud service, which uploads data on teaching and stakeholder and expand cloud, where users can gain access to them at any time. After authorized, each stakeholder can customize resource library, update online, and download the update in real time.

Cloud authentication: is identity authentication function. Each identity performs its own functions since every identity is different, and contents authorized to teachers, students and administrators are different, which opens the channels in the ecosystem of AR education cloud platform.

Cloud community: is the combination of AR education cloud units within a range. Cloud community connects people with applications, services and sources, clarifies role definition, application acquirement, service sharing and ownership of resources. Through sharing agreement, it shares AR resources, examinations and courses of each school and forms a cloud resource sharing library, as avoiding information isolated island is cloud community.

Cloud data: analyzes students’ needs and command of knowledge at a specific stage through knowledge management function of cloud teaching to obtain individual data to try to push targeted knowledge. Figure 2 is the distribution diagram of test scores of students in “Ed+AR” Education Cloud Platform, which divides scores into five grades-excellent, good, average, ordinary, failed, displayed in the form of information visualization, making it convenient for teachers to know about academic performance of students.

figure 2

Fig. 2.

Figure 3 is the information structure of “Ed+AR” education cloud platform. The platform takes rich media as content, cloud update as construction model, cloud authentication as service and access to service application, cloud community as cloud resource sharing library, and cloud data as core as a condensation and extract of data. Rich media, cloud update, cloud authentication, cloud community and cloud data are correlated, featuring non-excludability.

figure 3

Fig. 3.

5 Ecological Strategy of “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform

“Edu+AR” education cloud platform is a system that utilizes AR+Internet as the platform, rich media teaching resources as contents, hardware and technology infrastructure as applications and mobile clients as terminals and focuses on a certain sub-differentiated population. As shown in Fig. 4, its ecological strategy is to establish a “Platform+Content+Application+Terminal” vertically integrated closed loop ecological chain by relying on sufficient cloud data.

figure 4

Fig. 4.

The “platform” of “Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform consists of data, cloud platform, and cloud computing. “Content” includes student, teacher, teaching material modules and teaching management module (as shown in Fig. 5). “Application” includes “Edu+AR” Application and PC web page, and “terminal” is the mobile terminal.

figure 5

Fig. 5.

Teaching material module: mainly is screen simulation teaching courseware of rich media teaching which contains file, video, 2D, 3D, game, and quiz. Students can take test online. The contents of quizzes can be divided by question type into single choice, multiple choices, true or false, gap filling, and default answer and so on. Also they can be divided by usage scenarios into in-class exercise, homework, classwork, and so forth.

Teaching management module: mainly includes access path record, test record, and customized teaching resources management. Custom teaching resource management primarily includes upload updated versions, cover images, synopses and authors of textbooks, models, games, and quizzes. This cloud platform matches actual answers with default answers in real time and generates a histogram for accuracy rates of a question. Access path record and test record can be ranked according to view counts of resources and test scores, making it convenient for teachers to know about browsing of students and their mastery of knowledge.

User management module: mainly includes stakeholders, such as administrators, teachers and students. Administrators manage all access authorizations, and teachers are responsible for defining and updating teaching material library, while students download and study courses and complete assignments. Only administrators can allocate access accounts, teacher has no power to allocate access accounts but is able to adjust and change resource module accordingly and check learners’ resource browsing and answers, students can only learn and evaluate knowledge points through the app and have no other rights.

When students are using teaching material module, their behavioral data and test records will be sent to teaching management module. Teachers can customize teaching materials according to data from teaching management module, for example, learners will automatically obtain right answers and analyses after they watch the resources and submit quiz, and also they can view all learners’ view counts of resources and test answers in real time in teaching management module of teaching cloud platform. Teachers can view correctness rates of answers provided by students in real time to adjust next teaching strategy and perfect, diversify and integrate teaching material modules for students to use again, which forms a closed loop of the ecological chain. In addition, after this education cloud platform collects enough data, the system will automatically push suitable teaching schemes and key and difficult points to teachers through cloud computing, efficient and leaving no blind spots, and knows “students” better than “teachers”.

To put such an ecological strategy into practice, researchers and educators should explore demands and data of teachers and students thoroughly. To solve the practical problems of teaching by using the data mining and analysing learning technology, such as learning knowledge model, learner behavior modeling, learning experience modeling, learning files, knowledge modeling, learning elements and design principles analysis, trend analysis, adaptive and personalized analysis. Performing AR teaching experiment by combining formal and informal learning via mobile terminals. In classrooms of formal learning, maturely developed mobile AR applications are employed to assist teaching and analyze their influence on learning outcomes of students. In addition, teachers should also instruct their students to utilize mobile terminals for informal learning outside the classroom, so that such students can gather information related to teaching materials and extra-curricular knowledge that they are interested in.

6 Conclusions

“Edu+AR” Education Cloud Platform is an all-round upgrade of “AR+Internet” and is a practical application of AR technology to the field of education by using Internet thinking and cloud platform as the carrier. Its ecological strategy is to build a vertical, integrated and loop-locked ecological chain–“Platform+Content+Application+Terminal” supported by sufficient cloud data. Teachers upload teaching plans to teaching material module for learners to study and evaluate, and teaching management module collects real-time data of students and drives the operation of new teaching scheme to be reapplied to students. Moreover, service provider can develop value-added services in this process, for example, producing customized AR game and model. “Content” in this loop iterates quickly. The “platform” of data, cloud computing and cloud platform is built with mobile as “terminal” and “Ed+AR” APP and page as “application”, and this platform can provide stakeholders with an efficient teaching environment platform.

Currently, there are some conflicts between user needs and the margin of present technology, as a result, stated objectives of students and teachers cannot be reached or developers cannot make a profit. For example, even if some products use the most advanced AR technology, it is hard to commercialize because teachers think previous technology can realize so they do not use it. Only when technology is consistent with user needs can new technology is put into good use. Seeking the conjunctions between technology and user needs is the key to the industrialization of AR in the education sector. In-depth study is for providing different entertainment modes for different needs to allow all users to have a higher degree of participation. For instance, building a more sophisticated and scientific interface to attract people of all age groups. Technological innovation should be strengthened for although technologies like image processing, rendering and tracing algorithm have been already applied to normal real environment, yet there are still problems such as shadow of object, time delay, shielding, strong jittering and motion blur and there is a big room for optimization and improvement. In addition, innovate the diversity of terminals. Now, most education-related AR products are limited to mobile Application or 3D model projected by projector, but eventually they are still presented on a two-dimensional plane. In the future, holographic projection of the platform may bring users more visual experience, and its combination with wearable devices like VR glasses is also a development direction.