Effects of an augmented reality-based mobile system on students’ learning achievements and motivation for a liberal arts course

ABSTRACT

Although Augmented Reality (AR) technology has already been adopted into mobile learning environments, additional effort must be put towards providing strong evidence that AR-based mobile systems are excellent educational tools that make a positive impact in or outside of the classroom. Our study utilized a similar AR-based mobile learning system developed to authentically teach a liberal arts course at a Taiwanese university. Under controlled study environments, we were able to design a system that could impart relevant concepts from the course to students outside of the traditional classroom setting. Experimental results demonstrated that students with the opportunity to learn through the proposed system demonstrated higher learning motivation, had better learning performance and comprehension abilities than those studying via the conventional outdoor instruction approach. Moreover, the questionnaire survey conducted after our study revealed that “confidence” was the most highly rated motivational factor among students who used the proposed system, suggesting that students were quite motivated to learn using the novel system supplemented with technological advances because they felt more sure of their knowledge and performance. Thus, we believe that using the proposed system can effectively improve the learning outcomes of students enrolled in the liberal arts course, with the particular benefit of boosting confidence in gaining new knowledge, which leads to an improvement of overall learning performance and motivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Human computer interaction
• interactive learning environments
• evaluation of CAL systems
• mobile learning
• augmented reality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kai-Yi Chin was born on July 21, 1978 in Nantou County, Taiwan. In 2011, she received a Ph.D. in Information Engineering and Computer Science from Feng Chia University (Taichung City, Taiwan). She worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Digital Humanities at Aletheia University (New Taipei City, Taiwan), where she has worked as an Assistant Professor from August 2011 to July 2015. Her research interests include computer-aided learning, multimedia applications, mobile technology, ubiquitous learning, and augmented reality, etc.

Ching-Sheng Wang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at Aletheia University, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering from Tamkang University in 2001. His main research interests include mobile navigation, location-based service, ubiquitous computing, multimedia, virtual and augmented reality, etc. Dr. Wang has published over 80 papers in international journals and conferences, and earned several research awards and grants, as well as participated in many international academic activities.

Yen-Lin Chen (S'02–M'07–SM'12) received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Control Engineering from National Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu, Tai-wan) in 2006. He worked as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei, Taiwan), where he was worked as an Associate Professor from Feb. 2012 to Aug. 2015. His research interests include image and video processing, pattern recognition, intelligent vehicles, and intelligent human-computer interactive systems.

ORCID

Kai-Yi Chin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6099-2289

Ching-Sheng Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2002-2157

Yen-Lin Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7717-9393

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China under [grant number MOST-106-2218-E-027-002].