Augmented Reality in Lower Secondary Education: A Teacher Professional Development Program in Cyprus and Greece

Abstract

The current article provides an overview of a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) program that has been designed, pilot tested, and implemented to investigate the impact of augmented reality (AR) on: (a) Teachers’ level of technology (AR) acceptance, adoption of inquiry-based instructional approaches, and confidence towards teaching twentieth-first century skills in STEM-related courses; and (b) students’ potential enhancement of specific twentieth-first century skills and motivation and interest during a STEM- (science, technology, engineering, mathematics)-related course supported with AR. This article focuses on the teachers’ points of view concerning the impact of their STEM-related interventions on their students’ motivation and learning, as well as the factors that influence the teachers’ technology acceptance. The TPD program has been implemented in Cyprus and Greece with twenty-five lower secondary school teachers (20 in Cyprus and 5 in Greece). The research methodology applied is Educational Design Research (EDR), including an initial phase of the TPD program and a second (improved) phase. The data collection tools consisted of questionnaires, interviews, and observation of classroom interventions. Initial findings and their implications for teaching and future research are discussed, indicating the potential benefits and challenges surrounding the integration of AR within the educational process.

Cognitive Load Implications for Augmented Reality Supported Chemistry Learning

“…In this case, diverse results are reported, which in some studies AR seems to reduce cognitive load, while other papers measured an increase [8,11,13]. Researchers agree that more research concerning the AR-use in educational settings in necessary [8,12,14].…”

“…In addition, besides the usability in a technical sense, a question instructors are faced with during development, is how to design a suitable learning support and simultaneously to avoid cognitive overload [11,12]. For now, most of the studies concerning AR in science education focused on learning outcomes or affective variables like motivation or enjoyment and reported positive results [8,[12][13][14]. On the contrary, only few studies investigated how AR affects the learners' cognitive load during learning [8].…”

Augmented Reality Books: Motivation, Attitudes, and Behaviors of Young Readers

“…With respect to AR books, in particular, several research studies focused on the use of AR books by university students [31]- [35] to examine their cognitive load, motivation, and attitudes [33], [34] to examine their learning in Biology [35], and to examine their motivation and improvement in academic performance [31], [32]. The majority of previous studies measured attitudes and behaviors, such as acceptance, adoption, and confidence towards AR books targeting adults, for example, university students [33] or future teachers [6], [36] or parents [37]- [39]. The studies that targeted parents examined their interaction with young children while reading AR books [37], [39].…”

The Study of AR-Based Learning for Natural Science Inquiry Activities in Taiwan’s Elementary School from the Perspective of Sustainable Development

“…In this study, we employed the TAM as a theoretical basis to study users' adoption patterns in terms of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use, and used the TAM as a basic research framework to look into app users' willingness and adoption behavior. Based on many previous TAM-related studies [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46], this study inherits the relevant research results and constructs a blueprint for the research to be explored. Therefore, we integrated external factors such as age and experience into the research framework of Venkatesh et al and TAM of Davis et al Some appropriate modifications were made to the model according to the situations and needs of our research.…”