By Laura Skilton (formerly Shaw) May 29, 2012
Dissemination, SCARLET+
Mimas, SCARLET

The SCARLET (Special  Collections  using  Augmented  Reality  to  Enhance  Learning  and Teaching) Project, which ends this month, was based on this premise; a teacher and group of students gather around a Dante manuscript or early printed edition in the Library.

SCARLET demonstrated a huge impact thanks to an innovative and engaged team and an enthusiastic student body. ‘Technology is at the heart of everything we do’ at Mimas; by bringing together learning technologists with academics and librarians SCARLET’s success is pedagogy, not technology, driven. Mimas has learnt so much about using AR to enhance the student experience and we want to assist other Institutions to do the same.  We are very pleased to now have funding through SCARLET+ to share this knowledge.

Mimas have secured JISC funding to embed our skills and knowledge in other Institutions over a one year project, SCARLET+, starting this month. We will be working with enthusiastic staff at the University of Sussex and the Craft Study Centre at the University for the Creative Arts to trial the SCARLET AR Toolkit with two different types of collections (mass observations and visual arts). This will result in case studies about embedding AR in the wider community and with different types of collections, most importantly two more Institutions will be able to develop pedagogically driven AR.

How can you benefit from this project?

We plan to run an online workshop and invite anyone in the community interested in AR. Keep an eye on this blog to follow the progress of SCARLET+ and find out details of opportunities for your Institution to learn from our work. You can also find out more about the project on the JISC website.

In summary

SCARLET+  will allow us to take the lessons learnt from SCARLET and our new understanding of the knowledge, skills and barriers to developing AR to other institutions and different types of collections,  further  building  our  understanding  of  the  application  of  Augmented Reality  and  transferring knowledge across the community.