Toward smart learning environments: Affordances and design architecture of augmented reality (AR) applications in medical education

Medical education places emphasis on situational learning of real-life clinical contexts, while simultaneously focusing on human body three-dimensional (3D) visualization. However, classrooms and laboratories being the main learning environment in early years of medical education, there is limited exposure to real clinical environments to adequately meet such objectives. This study proposes that augmented reality (AR) applications can provide both affordances. Such applications fulfill many of the criteria for smart learning environments (SLE). A systematic review aiming to identify the affordances of AR applications, their design architectures, and impact evaluations was conducted. This review evaluated 25 studies and, with model case studies, analyzed how the different AR applications provided situational learning and visualization in medical education and how their design architecture provided such affordances toward contextualized, interactive, and personalized SLEs. It was found that AR affords facilitation of situational learning and visualization individually. Their integrated educational impact, however, needs to be evaluated further.