Teaching High School Computer Science with Videos of Historical Figures -- An Augmented Reality Approach

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of teaching history of computing with videos of historical figures. Augmented reality (AR) techniques were applied to assist student accessing the videos of historical figures while reading a printed textbook. Whenever a student was interested in a historical figure, one could use a tablet PC to scan the figure's picture, and the corresponding video about the person would then be played on the screen. We adapted thirteen videos of historical figures in computer network field and adopted a quasi-experimental method to evaluate the effectiveness of the AR-based learning approach. Two classes of high school students, with a total of 84 students, participated in the experiment. One class of the students used Tablet PCs to access the videos of historical figures, and the other class using traditional didactic instruction served as the control group. The data collected for analysis are students' achievement test scores and answers to a questionnaire, which consists of questions on attitudes toward learning, perspectives of nature of science, and perceptions on the AR activities. Our findings showed that the AR-based historical figure videos helped students comprehend learning contents and promoted their attitudes toward learning. Students appreciated the convenience of using AR tools to access the history videos. Future research should investigate other approaches to integrate AR with the videos of historical figure, and in general, to integrate AR with other media format of computing history.