Civic education deals with questions that surround us every day: How do we recognise reliable information? How can we participate in our communities? What makes a decision fair or responsible? And how can people express disagreement and advocate for change constructively?
These are not questions that stop being relevant when formal education ends. Civic competences continue to develop throughout adulthood as people encounter new social issues, technologies, political debates and communities. The challenge for adult education is therefore to create opportunities for people to question, interpret, discuss and apply what they learn.
This is where technologies such as augmented reality (AR) can offer interesting possibilities. Augmented reality adds digital elements to the environment around us through devices such as smartphones or tablets.
In education, this can transform a static learning experience into something more interactive. Instead of only reading about a civic topic, learners can explore it through images, audio, artistic works and interactive activities. A photograph might introduce questions about media representation, while literature or theatre could open a discussion about social responsibility, participation or cultural diversity.
Exploring civic competences through experience
Civic competence extends beyond knowledge of political institutions. It also includes the skills and attitudes people need to understand information, interact with others and participate responsibly in society.
The CITRUS project focuses on five areas in particular: media literacy, civic participation, cultural diversity, ethical decision-making and the art of protest. Its approach combines interactive learning with artistic expression to encourage reflection and dialogue around these subjects.
AR can help make these topics more concrete. Learners exploring media literacy, for example, can be encouraged to question how information or images are presented. Artistic works dealing with identity or social issues can create opportunities to discuss cultural diversity. Civic participation and protest can be explored through examples of how individuals and communities have expressed ideas and responded to social change.
Importantly, digital innovation is only useful when learners can access and understand it. Adult learners can have very different educational backgrounds, reading abilities, language skills and levels of confidence with technology. Accessibility therefore needs to be considered from the beginning rather than added afterwards.
Within CITRUS, learning materials are being developed in easy-to-read formats and supported through audio and visual elements, with particular attention to adults with reading difficulties. The project also aims to follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines when developing the AR application and its educational materials.
CITRUS: putting this approach into practice
These ideas are being explored through CITRUS – Civic Art Transforms Us, an Erasmus+ adult education project combining art, augmented reality and civic learning.
The project is developing an AR-based Civic Art Gallery App that will bring together 12 digitised artworks from literature, photography, music and theatre alongside 5 interactive educational programmes.
Rather than using AR simply because it is a new technology, CITRUS aims to use these artistic experiences as starting points for reflection and discussion about civic life.
This is ultimately where the potential of AR in civic education lies: for creating new ways for adults to explore ideas, encounter different perspectives and engage more actively with civic questions.