Aix-Marseille Université entrusts the digital agency STRATEGIA with the realization of its project Augmented Reality for Teacher Education faculties (ARTEfac) - labeled "academy of excellence" A*MIDEX 2017 carried by two teacher-researchers Hélène Cheneval-Armand and Jérémy Castera. This project aims to develop an innovative training device in Augmented Reality (AR) for trainers, teachers and students in master MEEF (Métiers de l'Enseignement, de l'Education et de la Formation).
Within Aix-Marseille Université, the Institut National Supérieur du Professorat et de l'Education (Inspé) provides training in teaching, education and training. It has 3,000 MEEF master's students.
At the start of the 2020/2021 academic year, the Inspé's MEEF master's programme will have new digital educational tools to offer innovative and attractive training engineering courses. These tools enrich science and technology training to promote students' employability.
Augmented Reality to increase the mastery of scientific concepts
L'Inspé thus engages these students in a process of research on Augmented Reality (AR) in the teaching of Science and Technology learning in primary school. By training students in AR, these future teachers will also be able to reuse it with their students in situ, in order to better transmit scientific concepts to the program.
"The students who intend to become teachers in schools come from completely different backgrounds and the science streams are poorly represented. We found that they had difficulty in transmitting science concepts with their primary school students. We felt it was important to make up for this lack of scientific knowledge in order to make it easier for future teachers when they find themselves in a teaching situation. Based on research in cognitive sciences and education sciences, we chose to approach scientific concepts using new technologies, and in particular Augmented Reality," emphasizes Sabrina MARCHI, an engineer for digital teaching at the Inspé d'Aix-Marseille.
The use of ARTEfac will be operational at the start of the 2020-2021 academic year. It will then be extended, during the year, to other scientific courses according to demand. In the longer term, it is planned that it will be made available to all users of Aix-Marseille University. All staff and students will have access to the BackOffice from their Digital Work Environment (DWE). A Hubert Curien (PHC) partnership has even been initiated with the University of Beirut. This cooperation between the two universities aims at deploying the ARTE-fac tool in Lebanon.
More information on the Inspé website:
https://inspe.univ-amu.fr/fr/recherche/actualites-recherche
More info at: https://inspe.univ-amu.fr/fr/recherche/actualites-recherche