Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people.
(Stephenson undated)

Educators often seem lost in technical jargon and the fast pace of changes, whether social, economic, political or technical. Thus, they try to mitigate the distance between theory and praxis, involving students more in the learning process. This process of iPEAR is encapsulated in the motto:

‘Connect people, design technology-enhanced learning (TEL) pedagogy, skills and content will improve‘.
(Themeli, 2023)

We share updated resources by connecting ourselves with mentors, experienced colleagues, researchers, and prominent figures. We have a network of people to construct knowledge and improve competencies. The process could be enhanced with technology and pedagogy to navigate through challenges and pave the way for innovation and creativity.

6.1 Educators’ perspectives on challenges in higher education

Educators in higher education face several challenges that impact their teaching and students’ overall learning experience and well-being that the iPEAR approach can address. Some of the key challenges include:

Evolving Technology: Rapid technological advancements require educators to continuously update their skills and adapt to new teaching methods and tools. Integrating technology effectively into the curriculum can challenge educators with limited experience or resources. Due to the rapid pace of changes, the students and colleagues, as fellow learning travellers, count on each other in class and online to catch up via formal or informal learning approaches.

Student Engagement: With the increased distractions and competing demands on students’ attention, it can be challenging for educators to keep students engaged in the learning process. Finding innovative and interactive teaching methods to capture students’ interest and promote active participation is a constant challenge. If we invite the students to co-create the content and fully involve them in what is most needed, why and for what purposes, learning becomes personally relevant. Visualisation of content and processes is the international language of learning that AR could embrace the mixed reality world where the physical and the virtual meet.

Diverse Student Population: Higher education institutions often have diverse students with varying learning styles, abilities, and cultural backgrounds. Educators need to create inclusive learning environments that cater to all students’ needs, ensuring equitable access to education and support. In doing so, we need to reward a sharing peer culture.

Assessment and Evaluation: Designing fair and practical assessments that accurately measure students’ knowledge and skills can be challenging. Balancing the need for rigorous evaluation with providing timely and constructive feedback to students requires careful planning and consideration. Learning is about reaching a learning outcome and creating a path students can follow without stressful implications.

Limited Resources: Budget constraints and limited resources, such as time, technology, and support staff, can challenge educators. They may have to find creative solutions to deliver quality education despite these limitations, which can be time-consuming and demanding. The iPEAR partnership of Higher Educational institutions has created open-access resources, a toolkit (iPEAR resources, 2023), a pedagogical strategy, a compendium of case studies, a MOOC and – last not least – this book that would be available to guide and offer cost-effective options.

Changing Pedagogical Approaches: Traditional lecture-based teaching methods are being challenged by more student-centred and active learning approaches. Educators must adapt their pedagogical practices to accommodate these changes, which may require additional training and professional development. iPEAR pedagogy is about determining what is valuable and empowering for the students according to their level of autonomy. In other words, only by working together can we enhance performance. Our peers and colleagues are unlimited sources of learning, and their constructive feedback makes a difference.

Research and Publishing Pressure: In many higher education institutions, educators are expected to research and publish scholarly work in addition to their teaching responsibilities. Balancing teaching, research, and publications can be demanding and time-consuming for educators, especially early in their careers. Working with peers and making teaching a research process for constant transformation and experimentation to empower students with new forms of visualisation (AR, VR) could be a way to combine research and teaching design that promotes learning for all.

Academic Integrity: Ensuring academic integrity and preventing plagiarism and cheating are ongoing challenges. Educators must employ strategies to promote ethical behaviour and academic honesty while using technology tools to effectively detect and deter academic misconduct. Working with peers in personally relevant tasks with effective technology for learning could be a personal narrative that leads to democratic ethos. Democratic ethos is the safety net of academic integrity. It is about building our communities of practice to benefit all. We can harness peer pressure to uphold social values. People are natural followers, so they use “behavioural contagion” to improve lives, says Robert Frank of Cornell University (Economist, 2022).

Mental Health and Well-being: Educators and students’ mental health and well-being are crucial for effective teaching and learning. Educators may face additional stressors, such as heavy workloads, demanding schedules, and the pressure to perform. They must prioritise self-care and create supportive learning environments that foster well-being for them and their students.

Keeping Pace with Industry Demands: Higher education must prepare students for the evolving needs of the job market. Educators must stay updated with industry trends and skills required in the workplace, align curricula accordingly, and ensure graduates are well-equipped for employment.

These challenges require continuous professional development, collaboration, and support from higher education institutions to help educators navigate and overcome them. The iPEAR perspective could address some of these issues by connecting with people.

6.2 Peer-To-Peer Learning can address educators’ challenges

Peer learning involves educators collaborating and learning from each other to improve their teaching practices. As discussed in chapter 2, peer learning can help address financial issues by sharing resources and expertise. Educators can collaborate to develop cost-effective teaching strategies and materials that reduce the need for expensive textbooks and resources. Additionally, educators can work together to identify and apply for funding opportunities that support their research and teaching. Peer networks can promote teaching and research and keep pace with the changes.

Peer learning can also help address diversity and inclusion issues in higher education. Educators can collaborate to develop and implement strategies that promote inclusivity and address unconscious bias in the classroom. This can include developing training sessions and workshops for faculty and staff on diversity, equity, and inclusion with practical interventions in class and online with a peer learning approach.

Peer learning can also improve student engagement by promoting innovative teaching practices. Educators can collaborate to develop and implement active learning strategies that encourage student participation and engagement.

Peer learning can help educators keep up with rapid technological advancements. Educators can collaborate to share their experiences with different technologies and identify best practices for incorporating technology into their teaching practices. Additionally, peer learning can provide opportunities for educators to learn from each other and receive support and training on new technologies and tools.

Finally, peer learning can help educators address the challenges of changing student demographics. Educators can collaborate to develop strategies that meet the diverse needs of their students, such as personalised learning and flexible scheduling. Peer learning can also provide opportunities for educators to share their experiences with nontraditional and diverse student populations and learn from each other. Learning with people from different cultural backgrounds could enhance empathy.

In conclusion, peer learning can effectively address the challenges educators face in higher education, including financial issues, diversity and inclusion, student engagement, technological advancements, and changing student demographics. Educators can develop innovative teaching practices that improve student learning outcomes and support their professional development by collaborating and learning from each other.

6.3 Augmented reality to address educators’ challenges

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that can also address some of the challenges educators face in higher education. AR involves integrating digital information with the user’s physical environment in real-time, which can enhance the learning experience. As we discussed in chapters 3, 4 and 5:

AR can enhance engagement and motivation by providing interactive and immersive learning experiences. AR applications can be designed to provide visual and interactive feedback, which can increase student engagement and motivation. AR can also create engaging and personalised learning experiences catering to students’ learning styles.

AR can enhance learning outcomes by providing a more dynamic and interactive learning environment. AR applications can create simulations and visualisations that help students better understand complex concepts and theories (Themeli & Prasolova-Førland, 2023). Additionally, AR can provide real-time feedback to students, which can help them identify areas where they need to dig deeper and adjust their learning strategies accordingly.

AR can enhance accessibility by providing a more inclusive and scalable learning environment. AR applications can be designed to provide alternative representations of content, such as sign language or text-to-speech, which can cater to the diverse needs of students, especially in e-learning courses. AR can also be used to create virtual field trips and other immersive learning experiences that can be accessed by students with physical limitations or who may not be able to participate in traditional learning activities. Additionally, AR can promote collaboration and teamwork, as students can work together to solve problems and complete tasks in a shared AR environment.

AR can encourage innovation by providing new and creative ways to deliver content and engage students. AR applications can create interactive textbooks, virtual laboratories, and other innovative learning materials.

To sum up, AR can be an effective technology for addressing the challenges educators face in higher education, including engagement and motivation, inclusion, learning outcomes, accessibility, and innovation. By incorporating AR into their teaching practices, educators can create more dynamic and interactive learning experiences that cater to the diverse needs of their students.

6.4 Future steps: Looking into artificial intelligence for peer learning & AR

6.4.1 Peer Learning and Artificial Intelligence

The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) tools with peer learning has gained significant attention as a means to revolutionise traditional learning environments. An example that Eric Mazur, the originator of the peer instruction approach (1997), suggests is Perusall. Perusall using AI has the potential to turn coursework into a social experience and increase peer-to-peer engagement. It claims that it encourages learner communities to use data best practices.

The following brief research summary explores integrating AI tools to enhance peer assessment, drawing on relevant studies and their findings.

Even though peer assessment has been recognised as a beneficial approach that promotes higher-order thinking, there are some common concerns because students’ comments lack (1) the ability to provide high-quality feedback, (2) the agency to monitor their work or (3) the incentive to invest the required time and effort as they think the quality of the reviews are not reviewed. To help mitigate these shortcomings, the study of Darvishi et al. (2022) presents a complementary peer approach that integrates training, self-monitoring and AI quality control assistance to improve peer feedback quality. Informed by higher education research, they have built a set of training materials and a self-monitoring checklist for students to consider while writing their reviews. Also, informed by work from natural language processing, they have developed quality control functions that automatically assess feedback submitted and prompt students to improve, if necessary. A between-subjects field experiment with 374 participants was conducted to investigate the approach’s efficacy. Findings suggest that offering training, self-monitoring, and quality control functionalities to students assigned to the complementary peer review approach resulted in more extended feedback perceived as more helpful than those who utilised the regular peer review interface. However, this complementary approach does not seem to affect students’ judgement (leniency or harshness) or confidence in grading.

In the same line of thinking, Bowen Mendoza et al. (2020) developed a learning strategy that allows the development of abilities based on the rubrics. This research developed a literature review of using artificial intelligence – AI techniques in selecting and designing rubrics in the context of learning evaluation. The information classification has considered electronic databases, using Zott’s focus as the research methodology. The preliminary results prove that there are different manners of rubric designs. These results reveal that the use of rubrics in the peer assessment processes is strongly related to the technology involved within AI for support in a better way the teaching-learning processes. The findings could become a reference framework for scholars to support their rubrics design with AI techniques. Academics should explore the educational potential of the new education based on the diffuse parity methodology, which provides an assessment related to students’ contribution in terms of recommendations in words.

Integrating artificial intelligence tools in peer learning environments holds immense potential for improving the learning experience. Studies have shown that AI-powered tools, such as intelligent tutoring systems, chatbots, and machine learning algorithms, enhance personalised learning, provide adaptive feedback, and promote collaborative knowledge construction (Niemi,2021). AI-based peer assessment tools and adaptive learning systems further contribute to integrating AI into peer learning. These findings emphasise the significance of leveraging AI tools to augment peer learning environments and facilitate more effective and engaging learning experiences.

6.4.2 Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence

Augmented Reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly evolving technologies that can be used to create innovative educational experiences. AR is a technology that enhances the real world with computer-generated content, while AI involves using intelligent machines to augment or replace human intelligence.

AR can create personalised learning experiences by overlaying computer-generated content on top of the natural world to provide customised information and feedback to students (Wu et al., 2020). AI can also personalise the learning experience by analysing student data and providing tailored recommendations and feedback (Akçayır et al., 2019). Educators can create a more personalised and engaging learning experience catering to students’ needs by combining AR with AI.

AR can be used to visualise abstract concepts and complex information by providing 3D models and simulations that students can interact with (Kucuk et al., 2018). AI can also provide visualisations by analysing data and creating visual representations of information (Chen et al., 2020). By combining AR with AI, educators can create a more immersive and interactive learning experience that helps students understand complex concepts.

AR can create adaptive learning experiences using sensors and cameras to track student movements and adjust the learning content accordingly (Chen et al., 2018). AI can also adapt the learning experience in real-time by analysing student data and providing personalised recommendations (Akçayır et al., 2019). By combining AR with AI, educators can create a more dynamic and responsive learning environment that adapts to the needs and preferences of individual students.

AR can be used to create interactive assessments by providing virtual environments for students to complete tasks and assignments (Kucuk et al., 2018). AI can also be used for assessment by analysing student data and providing feedback on student performance (Chen et al., 2020). By combining AR with AI, educators can create a more comprehensive and accurate assessment system that considers individual and group performance.

In the latest book, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence (Geroimenko, 2023), the authors consider practical, theoretical, and cultural aspects of “AI-powered AR” and “AR-enriched AI” and their use in a large variety of areas, such as education, medicine, healthcare, dentistry, pharmacy, active lifestyle, smart services, fashion, retail, recommender systems, and several others. Chapters 6, 7and 8 highlight ways to be used in HE, such as Immersive Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), which examines the convergence of AI and AR use in educational settings.

In short, the fusion of the two cutting-edge technologies -AR and AI – is still early. Still, it seems promising to design innovative and engaging educational experiences that address challenges in higher education, such as immersion, personalisation, visualisation, adaptability, and assessment.

6.5 Conclusion

Overall, the iPEAR process is a flexible and generic approach that could suit the needs or preferences of educators and students if they consider the pedagogy elements and design courses accordingly. There is no right or wrong approach! It is a navigation map that can make learning engaging, motivating and empowering; it depends on where people want to go and how much time they would like to invest in working together or experimenting with tools and approaches. However, it can address educators’ challenges in this time and age by fusion of advanced technologies, such as immersive tools potentially enhanced with artificial intelligence.