Publication

Abstract : In our existing education system, teachers primarily engage students verbally in what we call ‘chalk and talk’ approach. Occasionally, certain learning models are also made use of for the purpose of teaching specific concepts. Smart classroom systems employ PowerPoint presentations, videos and the like. However, lack of sufficient self-interactive models and/or inadequate interaction with them, cause students lose focus. Young children, particularly with disabilities such as those with hearing impairment and vocal dysfunction are prone to it. Our studies showed that students experienced enhanced attentiveness in an environment conducive to self-interactive learning. The word interaction here does not refer to just teacher-student communication rather; it places greater emphasis on interactive self-learning. The student is utmost comfortable when he/she feels to be the center of attention or the teaching is exclusive to him/her. We propose a novel learning system in order to kindle the innate curiosity of students. This article presents an application of the ongoing research on interactive learning. Our system employs both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) to bring about a deeper immersive and effective interactive learning experience to the students. This Interactive VR-AR Learning System (IVRARLS) provides a learning environment with each student being able to independently interact to learn with his or her own virtual learning models in real time. In our scheme, Microsoft Kinect is used for the extraction of interactive gestures of the participant(s). This approach is better suited particularly for the hearing impaired and/or vocally challenged children nevertheless it does not exclusively target them.