ARIDLL at EuroCALL 2024

Title: Enhancing Language Teaching with Augmented Reality: Insights from the ARIDLL project

by Alice Gruber, Anke Berns, and Mikhail Fominykh

Abstract: Augmented Reality (AR) enhances reality by incorporating digital elements, potentially improving the understanding of abstract or imperceptible concepts and problem-solving skills. Despite its potential, AR faces technological challenges and a lack of pedagogically-sound resources. In language education, AR offers multimodal environments that can boost motivation, engagement, and promote interactive and collaborative learning among peers. However, its adoption is limited due to insufficient AR literacy among teachers and a lack of resources. The  Erasmus+ funded Augmented Reality Instructional Design for Language Learning (ARIDLL) project aims to address these gaps by establishing a professional community, providing AR training for teachers and instructional designers, and developing open educational resources. By utilising MirageXR, an open-source AR platform, the project facilitates AR integration into language teaching, fostering sustainable and innovative learning environments. This paper outlines the rationale for ARIDLL and showcases an AR activity developed for English for Specific Purposes. It concludes with a discussion of the project’s next steps to ensure the creation of pedagogically-sound AR learning activities for language teacher communities.

In the paper, we present an example AR activity that was designed and implemented using MirageXR. The objective of this example activity is to illustrate key features and development possibilities that MirageXR offers for creating AR content for language learning.