Marine education comprises rich and multifaceted issues. Raising general awareness of marine environments and issues demands the development of new learning materials. This study adapts concepts from digital game-based learning to design an innovative marine learning program integrating augmented reality (AR) technology for lower grade primary school students. The proposed activity integrates physical and virtual learning materials, encouraging students to engage in an interactive learning environment that makes learning fun and interesting. The program introduces Taiwan’s marine ecology and water resources. To assess learners’ engagement, a quasi-experimental research design was used, where the participant pool consisted of 51 primary school students in Taiwan. Results indicate that (1) students were highly confident by the learning activities and viewed them satisfactorily, (2) students acquired the target knowledge, and (3) the innovative learning program specifically helps low academic achievers improve learning performance.

Emerging technologies have been widely used in applications designed to increase potential for learning enhancement. This study develops a mobile application to integrate augmented reality (AR) functionality into physical puzzle-type games. In the application, learners see visualizations of three-dimensional (3D) dinosaurs and interact with relevant multimedia learning content. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed platform, experiments were conducted to evaluate impact on learner achievement and motivation. Experimental (AR-based) and control (paper-based) groups included a total of 53 fifth-grade students. Pre- and post-activity questionnaires (adapted from the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction (ARCS) Model of Motivational Design), and pre- and post-learning quizzes were used for assessment. Results showed that the AR-based group scored significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the Paper-based group, raising implications for a new approach to teaching natural science at the elementary school level. However, the AR-based group also showed a relative drop in confidence, suggesting that further investigation is needed to understand the impact of AR technology on learner motivation. This study provides a case for the integration of AR technology into typical physical games. The results raise important concerns for further research in technology enhancement in education. Future research should include a wider range of content topics and target groups.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is among the major emerging research areas and industrial application fields. An important area of its application is in the preventive healthcare domain, in which appropriate dietary intake reporting is critical in assessing nutrient content. The traditional dietary assessment is cumbersome in terms of dish accuracy and time-consuming. The recent technology in computer vision with automatic recognition of dishes has the potential to support better dietary assessment. However, due to the wide variety of available foods, especially local dishes, improvements in food recognition are needed. In this research, we proposed an AI-based multiple-dish food recognition model using the EfficientDet deep learning (DL) model. The designed model was developed taking into consideration three types of meals, namely single-dish, mixed-dish, and multiple-dish, from local Taiwanese cuisine. The results demonstrate high mean average precision (mAP) = 0.92 considering 87 types of dishes. With high recognition performance, the proposed model has the potential for a promising solution to enhancing dish reporting. Our future work includes further improving the performance of the algorithms and integrating our system into a real-world mobile and cloud-computing-based system to enhance the accuracy of current dietary intake reporting tasks.

Background: Advances in voice technology have raised new possibilities for apps related to daily health maintenance. However, the usability of such technologies for older users remains unclear and requires further investigation. Objective: We designed and evaluated two innovative mobile voice-added apps for food intake reporting, namely voice-only reporting (VOR) and voice-button reporting (VBR). Each app features a unique interactive procedure for reporting food intake. With VOR, users verbally report the main contents of each dish, while VBR provides both voice and existing touch screen inputs for food intake reporting. The relative usability of the two apps was assessed through the metrics of accuracy, efficiency, and user perception. Methods: The two mobile apps were compared in a head-to-head parallel randomized trial evaluation. A group of 57 adults aged 60-90 years (12 male and 45 female participants) was recruited from a retirement community and randomized into two experimental groups, that is, VOR (n=30) and VBR (n=27) groups. Both groups were tested using the same set of 17 food items including dishes and beverages selected and allocated to present distinct breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals. All participants used a 7-inch tablet computer for the test. The resulting data were analyzed to evaluate reporting accuracy and time efficiency, and the system usability scale (SUS) was used to measure user perception. Results: For eight error types identified in the experiment, the VBR group participants were significantly (P<.001) more error prone owing to the required use of button-tapping actions. The highest error rates in the VOR group were related to incomprehensible reporting speech (28/420, 6.7%), while the highest error rates in the VBR group were related to failure to make required button taps (39/378, 10.3%). The VOR group required significantly (P<.001) less time to complete food reporting. The overall subjective reactions of the two groups based on the SUS surpassed the benchmark and were not significantly different (P=.20). Conclusions: Experimental results showed that VOR outperformed VBR, suggesting that voice-only food input reporting is preferable for elderly users. Voice-added apps offer a potential mechanism for the self-management of dietary intake by elderly users. Our study contributes an evidence-based evaluation of prototype design and selection under a user-centered design model. The results provide a useful reference for selecting optimal user interaction design. Trial Registration: International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Registry ISRCTN17335889; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN17335889.

In light of a recent spike in natural and man-made disasters, there has been an increase in interest in disaster prevention education and training. The effectiveness of both publicly-funded and voluntarily organized disaster education (DE) has attracted wide attention. More studies are needed to understand the innovative pedagogical practice and the impact of technological advances on disaster learning content development, effectiveness and motivation. This study investigates the application of augmented reality (AR) in DE and training. An AR-enhanced tool named ‘disaster-proof warrior’ was developed and tested to evaluate its enhancement effect on learning under two collaborative learning modes. A series of quasi-experiments involving 85 elementary school subjects was carried out to assess the learning effectiveness and the subjective reaction in learning motivation. The results showed the AR embedded learning tool is effective in engaging and motivating collaborative team knowledge building. This study adds to the existing literature of AR applications in education and training as well as providing a useful reference for future development and improvement of national DE and training.