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This review paper presents a systematic literature review on the use of Augmented Reality (AR) in engineering education, and specifically in student’s spatial ability training, for the last decade. Researchers have explored the benefits of AR, and its application has been of increasing interest in all levels of education. Engineering students tend to have difficulties in acquiring visualization skills, and hence, AR is gaining momentum in enhancing students’ learning achievements. This paper aims to present valuable information to researchers, tutors and software developers of learning technology systems concerning the advantages and limitations of AR in spatial ability training, the incorporation of adaptivity and personalization in AR applications as well as the aspects of spatial ability having been evaluated using AR and the prevalent evaluation methods for AR applications. To this direction, a total of thirty-two (32) studies were reviewed, having been published since 2010. The findings reveal an increase in the number of studies during the last three years. One major conclusion is the improvement of learners’ spatial ability using AR in educational settings, and the noted challenge is the need for more learning content. One research gap that has been identified is the lack of personalization in the developed applications, offering space for future research. Concluding, this area is under-researched, and thus, there is scope for a lot of improvement.

The closure of educational institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic leads imperatively to the utilization of technological advances and the Internet for enabling the continuity of learning. To this direction, Mobile Game-based Learning (MGbL) can be beneficial to teaching and learning; since, from technological perspective, most students prefer to use their mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, and from pedagogical perspective, incorporating gaming in educational process can boost students' motivation for learning and improve their learning outcomes. Hence, this study investigates learners' intention to use MGbL as an alternative educational practice during the COVID-19 pandemic, by modeling the pedagogical affordance of this technology and student interactions with it. As a testbed for this research, a MGbL application was used for the instruction of the programming language C# in higher education, during the lockdown period of 2020. The findings reveal that the MGbL technology has a significant and positive impact on student engagement and academic performance.

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