On linking social media, learning styles, and Augmented Reality in education

Abstract

The paper is aimed to present an original method of identifying students preferring to actively use social media in Augmented Reality (AR) based learning environments. The method is aimed to personalise learning by applying Felder-Silverman learning styles model and intelligent technologies and thus to improve learning quality and effectiveness. Literature review presented in the paper revealed that the last years we faced a tremendous development of social media powered by innovative technologies related to web services, web 2.0 and social networks. The key dimension of the social media sphere will be the dependent social identification of humans by a number of technologies. On the other hand, many instructors still rely on traditional teaching methods that are often filled with many words and few visual elements. Research shows that these teaching techniques are considered almost obsolete by many students specially those who are visual learners or team workers. Also, the influence of visual and social media has changed student perceptions and how they expect the instructional materials to be presented in a classroom setting. AR is a new technology with vast potentials and great pedagogical value that offers new methods for education. The method of identifying students preferring to actively use social media in AR-based learning environments is based on identification of learning activities’, actively applying social media, suitability indexes to particular students according to their learning styles. These new elements make the given work distinct from all the other earlier works in the area.