Abstract
Chemistry education is challenging when many students cannot see the relevance and interest between what they learn at school and their everyday life outside the curriculum. Due to the prevalence of chemicals in real life, students lose interest in those not-so-novel Chemistry problems as they are satisfied with their rudimentary grasp of knowledge. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to draw students’ attention to those day-to-day Chemistry concepts, a task in which augmented reality (AR) can be a competent pedagogical facilitator. Despite its popularity due to the development of smart devices, educators are still averse to adopting AR in teaching because of the doubts about its pedagogical effectiveness and difficulties in implementation. This paper will demonstrate an AR app developed by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) for a year four undergraduate Chemistry course under two UGC’s project funds and CityU’s Teaching Development Grant that aligns with the university’s Discovery and Innovation-enriched Curriculum. The learning theories and technology stack of development and deployment will be shared in this paper. The consideration during preparation, production, and publishing will also be documented. A pilot survey about students’ perception of the AR showed positive feedback for the AR app in terms of enhancing awareness, learning, understanding, and engagement, which addresses the concerns of retaining students’ engagement during teaching and learning real-life Chemistry. We hope that educators who are interested in adopting AR can gain insights from this AR development experience. This research can act as a foundation for further exploration of applying AR in secondary and tertiary Chemistry education.
Highlights
City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is one of the pioneers in the adoption and application of virtual reality (VR) technology in creative art, humanities, and social sciences (Im et al, 2018; Wong et al, 2019)
These concerns accentuate the need for further research of VR and augmented reality (AR) learning method and tools used in STEM teaching and learning
The contrast between the highest score item, “I believe that AR demonstration renders learning materials more detailed and understandable (4.35),” and the bottom item, “This AR learning tool is more effective than any other software I have ever used (3.73),” may suggest that students are benefited from the interaction and observation of elements within the AR software
Summary
City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is one of the pioneers in the adoption and application of virtual reality (VR) technology in creative art, humanities, and social sciences (Im et al, 2018; Wong et al, 2019). The pace of VR and AR development goes beyond research into the pedagogical application, which results in the insufficient evidence base for educators to determine the “why” or “how” of using VR and AR in learning and teaching (Bower and Jong, 2020). These concerns accentuate the need for further research of VR and AR learning method and tools used in STEM teaching and learning. This paper addresses AR’s pedagogical concerns and its effectiveness by documenting the best practice of developing the AR tool and conducting a pilot study
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