AR Reflection
The first spot I chose to augment was the second floor memorial reception desk. This is an area in the building that I don’t feel students usually go to. Infact, most people I asked had told me they didn’t even know how to get to the second floor. But right at the reception desk there is a ton of useful information and handouts for English majors that are not utilized. Out of all the handouts I chose to specifically highlight the Sigma Tau Delta honor society sheet. I chose to overlay this sheet of paper because I personally knew very little about Sigma Tau Delta before reading it. Sigma Tau Delta is an The International English Honor Society for four year colleges and universities. This is something that I think should be more publicly advertised by the University of Delaware and the English department. The sheet contains really important information about the society. Events here on UD’s campus include the banned book read-out, poe night, bad poetry contest, and the 2019 convention. Membership comes along with the opportunity to win scholarships, awards, and internship stipends. The specific requirements for membership are at least a 3.00 GPA, 12 hours in English, and 45 college credit hours.
The second place I chose to overlay was the writing center in the basement of memorial. I chose to augment this spot because I think it’s a really great tool that is not utilized by students. I am an English major and have been at the University for four years and I have only recently learned where the writing center is located. I think it is really important for this service to be promoted more for students. I chose to display the part of a pamphlet that shows what the writing center can do for you. The writing center has free 50 minute sessions where they focus on issues that writers face during all stages of the writing process. The writing center can be utilized by both undergraduates and graduate students focusing on brainstorming, developing a thesis, using sources, revision, organization, revision, and layout design. I think it is really important for students to understand what resources they can use at the writing center to achieve the best grades possible for english majors, and also non english majors.
At first I was extremely skeptical of augmented reality, but it ended up being a really fun an interactive way to learn more about memorial hall. I was far more inclined to go and seek out information when it was in the form of AR because it seemed more like a game than work to me. The challenges for me were choosing what information to overlay and in what spots of the building. Although memorial is just one building there were so many different places to potentially augment and I had to narrow down which I felt were the most important. I think that AR is a very useful tool for archival purposes. I think there is a lot to be done all around campus with AR but even just in memorial I think it would be awesome if old documents and writing pieces were augmented and displayed around the building. I think in the future AR will continue to grow because it is a very useful way to get people involved in something bigger than just them. It is able to connect thousands of people through a virtual world and especially with us all on our phones, it will only gain momentum.
