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All children deserve a quality education and the necessary resources to learn, grow and develop. However, due to the area’s harsh weather conditions, damaged roads, sparse healthcare, overcrowded schools, and limited teacher training, achieving this goal can be challenging for students in rural areas of Pakistan’s congested Sindh province.

Thankfully, an EPICS in IEEE team of students from the Department of Electronics at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET) in Jamshoro, Pakistan, developed a virtual and hands-on learning platform that has provided hundreds of elementary students in rural areas of Pakistan with instant access to a wealth of educational resources. The EPICS in IEEE team included nineteen students and two faculty supervisors from MUET, the IEEE-Instrumentation and Measurement Society (IMS) Student Chapter, and the IEEE Karachi Section. They collaborated on the platform’s display, content, and power management. “Our system features real-time capture, processing, streaming, and 3D visualization of recorded educational content as well as interactive 3D content adapted from the schools’ book lessons, allowing knowledge transfer to remote areas,”  said  IEEE member Sameer Qazi, a senior at MUET and one of the project leads.

The Fast Rural Development Program (FRDP) is a local group in rural Sindh, Pakistan, that works to promote sustainable development. FRDP was the non-profit partner that worked with the EPICS in IEEE team. “Our goal was to develop a 3D augmented reality (AR) display system to address the unique educational challenges faced by rural communities in Pakistan,” said Qazi.  While the team found it challenging to precisely align their prototype’s semi-reflective glasses and LED display to achieve a seamless threeview holographic effect, their ongoing efforts and out-of-the-box thinking proved successful. 

“So far, we’ve deployed our 3D AR system in two schools in rural Sindh and have reached about 500 students in first through fourth grade,” Qazi said of their outreach efforts. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive, with students demonstrating higher engagement and better conceptual understanding.  Teachers have also appreciated the system’s ease of use and its potential to transform traditional learning.” 

This project was made possible thanks to a US$4,115.00 grant from EPICS in IEEE, which was funded through generous donor support. Donors to the IEEE Foundation allow the EPICS in IEEE program to support projects being developed and impacting people in local communities worldwide. 

“From funding to mentorship, EPICS in IEEE provided us with essential support that allowed us to bring this project from concept to reality,” confirmed Qazi. “Ultimately, our vision is to see our system deployed in rural schools across Pakistan, where it can provide students with access to high-quality, interactive learning tools. More broadly, we hope that the technology can inspire similar innovations in healthcare, vocational training, and beyond and ultimately foster development in underserved communities.”

This story was excerpted from the following story: https://epics.ieee.org/blogs/augmented-reality-system-opens-doors-to-distance-learning-in-rural-pakistan/

Photo: Epics in IEEE project university team from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET) assembling their Augmented Reality 3D System prototype to deploy in local schools in Pakistan.