cleAR: an interoperable architecture for multi-user AR-based school curricula

Although there are some experiences that demonstrate the validity of the use of augmented reality in schools to help students understand and retain complex concepts, augmented reality has not been widely adopted in the education sector yet. This is in part because it is hard to use augmented reality applications in collaborative learning scenarios and to integrate them in the existing school curricula. In this work, we present an interoperable architecture that simplifies the creation of augmented reality applications, enables multi-user student collaboration and provides advanced mechanisms for data analysis and visualization. A review of the literature together with a survey answered by 47 primary and secondary school teachers allowed us to identify the design objectives of cleAR, an architecture for augmented reality-based collaborative educational applications. cleAR has been validated through the development of three proofs of concept. cleAR provides a more mature technological ecosystem that will foster the emergence of augmented reality applications for education and their inclusion in existing school programs.