Augmented Reality as a Tool for Enhancing Metacognitive Knowledge in Chemistry

Abstract

This study developed a Teaching and Learning Material (TLM) with Augmented Reality (AR) to enhance the students’ metacognitive knowledge, namely declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge in General Chemistry. The developed TLM has three components: the printed learning material that contains the AR trackers; a database of tactile 3D objects and animations that served as metacognitive scaffolds; and a dedicated smartphone software application specifically created for the retrieval, display and control of AR objects. The design-based research paradigm was used in the development of the Teaching and Learning Material with Augmented Reality, while the pre-experimental single group research design was employed in the assessment of the effect of scaffolds using AR on the students’ metacognitive knowledge. A Metacognitive Knowledge Test (MKT) was administered to the student participants before and after using the AR learning material system. Using the Hake factor test, the study found that the student participants achieved high learning gains for declarative and procedural metacognitive knowledge as signified by g values of 0.73 and 0.79, respectively. In terms of conditional metacognitive knowledge, the students registered a medium learning gain given by g = 0.68. It is recommended that teachers use innovative teaching and learning materials embedded with AR to enhance students’ learning attributes like metacognitive knowledge.