Technology Report Cite This: J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Use of Augmented Reality in the Instruction of Analytical Instrumentation Design Joseph A. Naese,† Daniel McAteer,† Karlton D. Hughes,‡ Christopher Kelbon,† Amos Mugweru,† and James P. Grinias*,† †
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey 08028, United States Multimedia Services, Information Resources & Technology, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey 08028, United States
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S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: Instruction on the design of analytical instrumentation is a critical component of the analytical chemistry curriculum. To simplify this process and enable students to directly see how the instruments that are in their own laboratory setting work, the use of augmented reality technology can be implemented. In this report, the HP Reveal platform was used to create digital overlays that are triggered when students view an analytical instrument through their smartphone camera. From here, further information on the components and operation of the instrument can be presented to students. To demonstrate this technology, various overlays were created for four analytical instruments commonly taught in second-year undergraduate analytical chemistry courses: flame atomic absorption spectrometer, gas chromatograph−mass spectrometer, liquid chromatograph, and double-beam UV−vis spectrophotometer.
KEYWORDS: Second-Year Undergraduate, Analytical Chemistry, Internet/Web-Based Learning
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been reported.19,20 However, the use of AR techniques for the instruction of analytical instrumentation has yet to be demonstrated. This report describes the use of a free, online AR platform to aid in the visualization of the instrument components and operation of four major analytical instruments that are commonly taught in a second-year undergraduate analytical chemistry course.
INTRODUCTION The importance of visualizing complex chemical concepts and phenomena throughout the undergraduate chemistry curriculum is well-established at this point.1−6 In analytical chemistry, one of the most important visualization concepts is the design and operation of complex instrumentation. This is especially important when student outcomes are aimed at understanding the individual components within these instruments and how they are assembled, rather than treating them as simple “black boxes”.7 Many instructors aim to show students the inner workings of the instrument, but the extensive time needed for assembly and disassembly can be a detriment, especially when these instruments are regularly needed for other teaching or research needs. To simplify this process and enable any student to easily view and learn more about instrument design, the use of augmented reality (“AR”)8 can be implemented. AR is a technology in which an image, animation, audio file, video, or other interactive media can be overlaid onto a realworld object accessed through a device such as a smartphone camera.8 Although the use of AR in educational settings has grown over the past several years,9,10 its use in chemical education is still growing. Some of the simplest uses have been for the identification of major chemical components within various household and food items.11,12 AR has also been implemented as a tool for laboratory safety training.13,14 The visualizations of three-dimensional molecular structures15,16 and simple chemical reactivity17,18 have previously been demonstrated with AR. Finally, efforts toward creating complete virtual wet laboratory experiments with AR have © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
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IMPLEMENTATION OF AUGMENTED REALITY FOR TEACHING ANALYTICAL INSTRUMENTATION DESIGN For the implementation of AR into the instruction of analytical instrumentation, one of the key aspects was the use of an opensource platform that did not require any specialized equipment to work. As most students are now familiar with having mobile devices integrated into instruction,21,22 an application that could easily be used on smartphones was ideal. One of the most widely used applications for this purpose is the HP Reveal Augmented Reality Studio platform23 (formerly Aurasma), in which instructors can create content on a web-based portal that students can access through a smartphone application. Initially, a trigger image (or “aura”) of an instrument is taken with a standard phone or digital camera and then cropped to contain just the instrument design. The software is able to detect the image through a student’s phone camera on the Received: September 28, 2018 Revised: January 24, 2019
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00794 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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Figure 1. Workflow diagram for the creation and triggering of an instrument overlay using augmented reality. In panel 1, an image of an instrument (gas chromatograph−mass spectrometer, GC−MS) is taken with a digital camera or smartphone. In panel 2, a second image is taken that will be overlaid on the first image during augmented reality triggering (in this instance, the column oven is open to show the GC column). Panel 3 depicts the online interface where the original image and the overlay are combined, along with other desired labels. These labels can be linked to Web sites or other media files; here, the “Injector” label links to the corresponding chapter in the Analytical Chemistry 2.1 textbook shown in panel 4. Once the overlay process is completed, the overlay will trigger when the phone camera observes the original instrument (panel 5), with clickable text labels leading to their linked content (panel 6).
basis of identifying characteristics and features of the instrument, so some testing can be required to ensure that an image will trigger in the application on the basis of cropping and lighting. In the web-based platform, AR overlays can then be added which can be used to label instrument components. These labels can then be used as clickable links to other content such as webpages, animations, audio files, or videos. For the purposes of the second-year undergraduate course in analytical chemistry at Rowan University, the following four AR instrument modules were developed (more details on their implementation and demonstrated use can be found in the Supporting Information):
(2) A gas chromatograph−mass spectrometer (GC−MS) with labels of instrument components and an inside view of the column oven. (3) A liquid chromatograph (LC) with labels of instrument components and an animation demonstrating a chromatographic separation along an LC column. (4) A double-beam UV−vis spectrophotometer with an inside view of all instrument optics and components and an animation demonstrating the optical path from the light source to the detector. A general workflow from camera trigger to label overlay for the GC−MS aura is shown in Figure 1. Along with instrument component labels, hyperlinks were included to the relevant pages of the open-source course textbook Analytical Chemistry 2.1,24,25 so students were immediately able to access
(1) A flame atomic absorption spectrometer (FAAS) with labels of instrument components and an expanded view of the source and nebulizer. B
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00794 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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CONCLUSION This report demonstrates the use of AR technology for the instruction of analytical instrumentation. AR has only recently started to be implemented in the chemistry curriculum, and this use is one of the ideal cases for analytical chemistry. Although the focus here was on a second-year introductory course, these concepts could also easily be implemented in upper-level instrumental analysis courses as well. Providing students the opportunity to see the inner workings of the instruments they are required to use is a critical aspect of understanding the theory behind them, and as shown here, AR provides a simplified way of achieving this goal. As technology develops further (through home-built applications or more complex AR platforms such as Zappar26), more extensive uses of AR for the instruction of analytical instrumentation may be feasible, perhaps eventually even enabling students to reconstruct full 3D models of the presented instruments part-by-part.
descriptions of the theory, design, and use of each component. As long as students are able to see the instrument with their phone camera, they are able to trigger the overlay and access the information that has been added to the aura. This was found to be especially useful to enable multiple students to identify instrument components at their own pace, rather than having a large number of students try to simultaneously fit around a single instrument and block the view of other students. The only real challenge that was identified in letting students monitor the instruments individually was the angle the camera needed to be at to trigger the overlay, although by moving the phone around students are typically able to view the aura within 10−30 s. The use of HP Reveal was tested in two sections of Quantitative Analysis at Rowan University, and an informal student survey was provided. Full results of the survey can be found in the Supporting Information, with some general observations detailed here. On average, the participating students liked using augmented reality to learn more about the instruments used in class but had mixed views when prompted to further comment on the activity. The two most prominent complaints were (1) difficulties with getting the auras to trigger when viewing the instruments, and (2) accessing the displayed information when not in front of the instrument. One key aspect for student users of the app is the need to follow the instructor account on which the auras were created (AnalyticalChemistry in this instance). Although instructions were provided to follow the account (see Supporting Information), not all students had completed this step and were not able to trigger the overlays until they followed the account. Having multiple students attempt to simultaneously trigger the aura also caused some issues as students in the front blocked the cameras of the students in the back. To remedy the second issue, rather than simply using portions of the text to attach to specific instrument components, the chapter segments could be added or individual lecture slides could be linked instead so students know where they can find the information again after they have observed it in front of the instruments. The biggest advantage for this method in terms of the ease of instruction was found with the double-beam UV−vis spectrophotometer. In our department, this instrument is regularly used for both teaching and research and downtime must be limited. Many of the key optical components are found under several instrument covers, requiring a number of structural parts to be removed to show them followed by more work to then reconstruct the instrument for regular use. With AR technology, this process only needs to be conducted once to take the image that will be used for the overlay, and this can also be combined with an animation that shows how the instrument is actually working rather than just how it looks. In this initial demonstration, the optical path of a photon from the source to the detector is shown. In the future, this demonstration could be expanded to provide alternative paths for photons not selected by the monochromator or changes to gratings and slit widths so students better understand these critical aspects of instrument design. For students to get a closer look at the individual components, older parts that have since been replaced are kept as hands-on examples and can still be implemented even with the use of AR. Overall, it has been found to be a simple-to-integrate tool that brings general laboratory “black box” instruments to life beyond what is generally covered during lecture sections.
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT
S Supporting Information *
The Supporting Information is available on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00794. General description of the process required to generate an aura and summary of the results of an informal survey for students who used the smartphone app during a laboratory section (PDF) Video examples of the application in use for four analytical instruments (MOV)
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
James P. Grinias: 0000-0001-9872-9630 Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to acknowledge the Rowan University Academic Technology Training and Innovation Center for technical support and Stephanie Mosher (Rowan University) for help with overlay creation. Information from Analytical Chemistry 2.1 is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which permits users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format as well as remix, transform, and build upon the material.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00794 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00794 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
