Relative Assessment of Traditional and Cloud Enabled Augmented Reality Applications for Chemistry Teaching and Learning Practices

Augmented interactive technology called augmented reality (AR) allows users to engage with virtual and actual objects simultaneously. More crucially, using their hands instead of a mouse or keyboard to engage with visual representations is possible with AR. AR in Education has great potential since it presents special chances to improve teaching and learning processes. Teachers can employ augmented reality to construct interactive lesson plans, hone their teaching methods, and enhance their instructional strategies. AR can simulate chemistry experiments in a virtual setting as a secure and cost-effective alternative to traditional hands-on studies. AR can provide 3D models, animations, and visualizations that help people grasp and relate to complicated ideas. Students can investigate the arrangement of atoms and comprehend the spatial interactions between various atoms and functional groups by using AR to visualize and modify 3D molecular structures. Students can utilize augmented reality to rotate, zoom in, and interact with digital molecules to grasp molecular geometry and bonding better. Students can see chemical reactions, model reactions, and assess the outcomes. AR applications generally consume more data and memory space since they contain many 2D/3D images, user interface, animations, graphics, etc. Sometimes, it is impossible to execute the AR-based application smoothly on mobile phones or tablets with average and low configurations in terms of memory and GPU. Cloud based services can be leveraged to operate large AR-based apps efficiently. This paper will discuss the deployment of traditional and cloud-based AR-based chemistry teaching and learning applications and compare the performance metrics of both approaches concerning standard parameters. When traditional AR application is compared with cloud-enabled AR application, traditional AR application size is less than cloud enabled AR application, and scanning time of the marker is also slightly more, but observed that memory consumption can be saved with cloud integration compared to the traditional approach, this helps us to build a scalable and sustainable AR application which is not possible in the on-premises AR applications. This study was to determine the impact of AR based study on student’s in terms of engagement, effectiveness, cognitive load, and motivation, participants have a positive user experience with high usability, engagement and satisfaction. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.