On July 15, 2019, a workshop on Green Chemistry for RCE Iskandar Sustainable & Low Carbon Schools Exhibition 2019 was held at AEON, Bukit Indah, Johor Bahru. The workshop was joined by students from the low carbon competition who used the opportunity to participate in a workshop/activity in an augmented reality learning environment of green chemistry, coordinated by Dr Corrienna Abdul Talib with the support of her colleagues and several postgraduate students from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FSSH), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The team received a warm welcome and the program facilitator introduced them to the 40 students and nine teachers who participated in the workshop. The coordinator then explained the objectives and guiding principles of the activity, and then assembled the students into small groups. They received five different forms of green chemistry images for colouring and proper augmentation. Surprisingly they coloured these images beautifully and visualized the three-dimensional representations of the augmented images using a mobile augmented reality application. The students were taken aback by the visualization of two-dimensional images, very familiar to them, into a three-dimensional form. They expressed their satisfaction with how the activity enhanced their understanding and supported their cognitive representation of objects by answering a survey on their attitude toward the augmented reality learning environment they  had just experienced. According to the survey, this type of environment in learning the concepts of green chemistry inspires students to learn and develop their creative and collaborative skills. The students were eager to show their appreciation and they were also presented with a gift. The leaders of the students expressed their gratitude to the team and to the management of the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for this rare and creative opportunity provided to the students.

Please contact corrienna@utm.my to request an invitation for STEM/STEAM program or get more information.

Written by Faruku Aliyu, Dr. Corrienna Abdul Talib and Dr. Rainer Zawadzki.