Keywords

1 Introduction

Las Vegas is a unique city in the State of Nevada where around 46 million people visit every year. The Strip is a 6.8 km street in length on the South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas, where world famous hotels and attractions are clustered together under unique themes that comprise of cultural, historical and science facts. The city itself is a giant level of theme park that provides diverse aspects of learning components. This motivated us to conduct the study of utilizing augmented reality (AR) technology with educational contents associated with facilities on the Strip as a live learning environment called, the Augmented Reality Strip (The AR Strip). The AR Strip is intended to examine a possibility for the educational utilization of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as cultural and historical information of the Las Vegas Strip through AR.

As a specific approach of the AR Strip, we first conducted an initial literature review to see if there are similar concepts and how AR influences learning and teaching in the domain of outdoor. We found similar concepts and examples described as follows. There was an educational entertainment concerned with virtual learning environment based on virtual reality that experimented with the educational applicability of augmented reality [1]. Gabbard et al. investigated the legibility of outdoor AR [2]. Kato introduced an augmented reality city-planning system as an outdoor AR experiment [3]. Schmalstieg suggested an AR museum guide, where visitors browsed multiple photos and animations using an AR based mobile system [4]. AR has been utilized as an assistive materials and interface in teaching and learning of STEM education [5] and also AR was a crucial role in constructing a fun-based education called edutainment [6]. It is shown that the above-mentioned augmented reality of educational approaches provides positive possibilities.

2 The AR STRIP Curriculum

In regard to create an initial AR Strip curriculum that helps people learn STEM plus history and culture associated with the Las Vegas Strip. Two hotels on the Strip, New York New York and Luxor, were chosen as a test site for the proposed AR Strip. These two hotels are shown in Fig. 1. The reason for selecting these two places was that each hotel has ample historical, cultural and science aspects of learning components.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Two AR strip places- New York New York (Left) and Luxor (Right)

Full size image

Within the two hotels, a total of six spots were identified as the study place. Each hotel had three study spots. For example, in New York New York hotel, we identified science and history related educational content and associated them with the roller coaster and the Statue of Liberty. As for the second place, Luxor Hotel, we identified cultural, historical, and science facts that are associated with an obelisk, a sphinx and a pyramid found either inside or outside the hotel. The contents were reviewed by a subject matter expert in the school of education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Table 1 shows the six study spots, where potential users experienced the learning of cultural, historical, or science learning using the AR Strip app.

Table 1. Six spots of The AR strip
Full size table

3 Experimental Design

The experimental design of the study was a within-subjects design, where participants experienced all the six study places in two different hotels described in Table 1. Anyone over 18 years old was eligible to participate in the study.

With regards to the AR Strip app prototype that provided participants with the learning content of each study place, it was implemented using Unity with iOS. Each study content included text and audio as well as it superimposed the content as 2D/3D visual, which appeared on a mobile device when a participant arrived at each study place. Figure 2 shows the snapshots of the app that we displayed the AR Strip content at the two study places.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Visualization of the AR strip content based on GPS

Full size image

A pre- and post-surveys were administrated before and after the experiment. We asked their previous experience with AR before the study on the pre-survey and then we asked their experience with the AR Strip after the study on the post-survey. Each survey included a section where participants rated their experience with AR technology on a 10-point scale where 1 is the worst rating and 10 being the best rating.

We anonymized participants identity by using numbers. We also used the numbers when we counterbalanced the order of the six study sites so that we minimized the order effect that maybe caused by the order of the stimuli. We assigned even-numbered participants for New York New York Hotel to start with and assigned odd-numbered participants for Luxor Hotel to start with.

4 Results and Discussion

A total of seven people participated in the initial user study. Their age ranged from 31 to 45 years old.

4.1 Pre-survey

The first thing we found from the pre-survey is that all the participants wanted to know more about the Las Vegas Strip. These include hotel information, history of the town and hotels, and attractions of Las Vegas. No one was interested in science related facts that are associated with the Las Vegas Strip.

Four participants (57%) already knew the concept of AR and they had a chance to experience with it with their mobile phone. All the participants thought that there are certain cultural, historical, or science aspects of information that is associated with the Las Vegas Strip that they can learn. Five (71%) participants had a positive thought that AR would help them facilitate the learning of either cultural, historical, or science learning on the Strip.

4.2 Post-survey

The AR Strip experience took place in six locations as shown in Fig. 3. Their overall experience of the AR Strip was positive because all the participants rated their experience with the AR Strip app over 5 points with a median of 7. They also gave the AR Strip app a was positive rating since the median value was 7.

Fig. 3.
figure 3

A user study of The AR strip

Full size image

Six participants (86%) answered that the AR app would help obtain information of the Strip. For questions, if the AR app helped them understand the cultural, historical, and science facts associated with the six places easier, six participants (86%) answered it was helpful. The median value is 8. It was shown that learning the cultural, historical and science aspects of the Las Vegas Strip using the AR Strip was rated positively, meaning that the AR Strip was helpful for their learning.

We received several comments from the participants. The majority of them were about the visualization of the contents. The graphics that we superimposed on the App were not good enough to attract and engage them to the learning of each subject. One participant commented that the volume of the audio was low. Another participant asked to include more examples of history associated with the six places. The participant wanted to see more graphics as well. Another comment that we received was about the user interface. Two participants commented that the user interface on the App was not easy and needs to be improved.

5 Conclusions and Future Works

This study introduced the AR Strip, a city and augmented reality based learning platform, designed to facilitate the learning of cultural, historical, and science facts associated with the Las Vegas facilities. Based on the user study, the AR Strip seems has a potential to extend the learning of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) knowledge as an active, live learning educational curriculum as a city-based learning curriculum.

As an extension of the current study, we will improve the functionality of the AR Strip app along with the AR Strip curriculum in the three categories, STEM, history and culture. We planned to conduct a formal user study with more diverse sample participants.