An Augmented Reality App to Learn Arabic Letters

Simplifying Quran Learning for Non-Arabic Speakers

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Inspiration

As teachers, we have seen how technology has revolutionised the way students learn. The use of technology is becoming more popular in supplementing the delivery of academic concepts. Mobile phones and tablets are becoming more accessible to students providing them with a modern platform to enhance their learning. With the global pandemic, technology has played a crucial role in the delivery of education to students.

We wanted to find a way to use technology to enhance the way non-Arabic speakers can learn the Quran. Our vision was to develop an interactive and engaging application that uses Augmented Reality (AR) to help students learn the Arabic Letters: the foundation for them to learn the Quran.

The primary goal of the app was to target the three key ways students learn: Seeing, Hearing and Touching. By incorporating these concepts into our app, users are able to familiarise themselves with the Arabic letters and common vocabulary from the Quran. Subsequently, users will be able to develop a deeper connection with the Quran. We believe we have achieved this by creating an Augmented Reality Arabic Letters app.

How it Works

The app works as follows:

  1. The user downloads the app onto their device from the GitHub Page
  2. The user downloads and prints their colouring page for each letter from the GitHub Page
  3. The user then colours the page and practises writing the letter
  4. The user selects the letter on the app for the page they have coloured
  5. When the app detects the colouring page, the user clicks create
  6. A 3-D Model of their coloured letter will appear before their eyes
  7. The user can interact with the letter through movement, sound and animation

How We Built It

There were 3 parts to building the app:

  • The first part was to build the 3-D Models on Blender
  • The second part was to design the colouring pages using Gravit Designer
  • The third part was to use Unity to create the app using Augmented Reality

Challenges

One of the challenges we faced was designing a page so that it could be recognised by the app whilst accurately matching the colouring on the page to the model. We overcame this by adding squares to increase the unique features on each page; improving camera detection and making the model appear more stable in the real world.

Another challenge we faced was the design of the user interface and animation. As we do not have programming backgrounds, we found it difficult to create a user friendly interface and realistic animations. We have utilised pre-existing packages to support the current design and we have provided a simple animation as part of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Accomplishments

We are proud to have produced an app that can utilise Augmented Reality technology to support students in their journey with the Quran. We believe that utilising this technology in this manner is quite innovative and are excited to be pushing the boundaries of how students interact with the Quran.

We ask Allah (swt) to make this app beneficial to its users and a means to strengthen their relationship with the Quran.

What We Learnt

We have enhanced our skills in many areas during this project. For example, we have developed our knowledge of programming through designing the app on unity, developing the user interface and creating the 3-D Models.

By exploring the different ways students learn, we were able to develop an app that caters to individual learning styles, making our app both inclusive and accessible.

Our Future

There are a number of ways that we hope to develop the app further:

  1. We would like to compile the colouring pages into a book so it is accessible to people who do not have a printer
  2. We would like to publish the Android and iOS versions of the app
  3. We would like to add extra animations and complete the sounds for each letter

In the long term, we hope to:

  1. Add Arabic words for students to learn. This includes common words in the Quran where the student can colour images related to this word (e.g. colouring and seeing a mosque to learn the word 'masjid').
  2. We want to develop more topics. This could be related to different stories of the Messengers and Prophets.

Conclusion

Alhamdullilah, we feel that this app has shown us the first steps to using Augmented Reality technology to develop apps to support non-Arabic learners in learning about the Quran.

We ask Allah (swt) to accept it from us and to bless the organisers of this competition for providing us the platform to present our work.

جزاك الله خيرا

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