Augmented Reality: An Emergent Technology for Students’ Learning Motivation for Chemical Engineering Laboratories during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In higher education, the learning of Unit Operations in Chemical Engineering and the development of practical activities became a real challenge. Therefore, the use of emerging technologies became necessary to develop practical laboratory activities of the Unit Operations due to the inaccessibility to the equipment infrastructure. In this study, Project-Based Learning methodology was assisted with the Augmented Reality (AR) technology for the development of subjects. The development of a real educational experiment for the application of a basic topic of the course as a project for each subject was proposed. The results were presented using the Zappar application, and a unique rubric was used for the evaluation of project. The evaluation of students’ motivation for learning was measured using Keller’s Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction (ARCS) model of motivation by Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). The attention, confidence and satisfaction demonstrate an acceptable reliability in comparison to relevance, which was considered as moderate reliability. Above 96% of students considered that the activities, materials, and organization of information used for the AR project caught their attention and encouraged their interest towards the fundamentals applied in the project. Around 80% of students expressed concern about the ease of AR technology use, and understood the learning aim of the project. Above 85% of students recognized the relevance of activities and their usefulness, and considered AR as a meaningful educational tool. 90% of students considered that AR technology helped them to develop the subject competencies. Cronbach’s Alpha was used to indicate an acceptable reliability of IMMS instrument. Regarding IMMS, values were superior to 0.7, which could be considered acceptable. For the individual ARCS dimensions, values of Cronbach’s alpha reached values of 0.94.