The effect of augmented reality activities on improving preschool children’s spatial skills

ABSTRACT

This study compares the effect of Augmented Reality (AR) based virtual manipulatives to physical manipulatives for teaching geometric shapes to preschool children to improve their spatial skills. A quasi-experimental research design was utilized in order to answer the research questions. The context of the research was a public primary school in Turkey with 72 preschool children, ages ranging from five to six. As the treatment, while the experimental group used tablet computers with AR applications, the control group used physical manipulatives for performing similar activities over a four-week application. Two spatial ability tests were conducted as pre-test and post-test. The results showed a statistically significant difference in the preschool children’s spatial ability test scores in favor of the experimental group.

KEYWORDS:

• Augmented reality
• spatial skills
• manipulatives
• geometric shapes
• preschool education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Zeynep Gecu-Parmaksiz has received her B.Sc. degree from Undergraduate Program in Primary Mathematics Education, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2007 and her M.Sc. degree from Department of Computer and Instructional Technologies, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2011. She has received her Ph.D. from Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT), Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey in 2017. She was a research assistant at the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey from 2011 to 2017. Her research interests include technology-enhanced learning, primary mathematics education, mobile learning, augmented reality, spatial ability.

Ömer Delialioğlu is an Associate Professor at Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT), Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. His research interests include spatial ability, mobile learning, design and development of effective blended learning environments and student engagement in these environments, computer networks and communication technologies, and technology-enhanced learning environments. He has several publications on blended learning and mobile learning environments. More at: https://blog.metu.edu.tr/omerd/