Collaborative Augmented Reality in Engineering Education

A continuous trend in education is the use of new technologies like Augmented Reality (AR). These technologies are assumed to make teaching and learning processes more hands-on and more tangible, particularly in terms of abstract learning contents. Due to this practical nature, AR is assumed to foster the motivation of concerning oneself with a specific learning content and supports, thus, the comprehension of it and its purpose for e.g. the future work life. In academic learning contexts such as engineering education, however, AR can also be used for collaborative purposes despite its currently most common purpose of demonstration and instruction. The present paper investigates the effects of using AR in collaborative team processes with special respect to motivation and emotional activation. A mixed methods approach is chosen in order to examine qualitative and quantitative data to gather both a subjective and an objective perspective on the subject of research. As the investigation shows, the motivation to use this technology is high which derives, amongst other factors, from the better comprehension of the learning content when compared to the results of the control group.