Augmented reality (AR) has evolved hand in hand with advances in technology, and today is considered as an emerging technique in its own right. The aim of our study was to analyze students' perceptions of how useful AR is in the school environment. A non-experimental quantitative design was used in the form of a questionnaire in which 106 primary sixth-grade students from six schools in the Region of Murcia (Spain) participated. During the study, a teaching proposal using AR related to the content of some curricular areas was put forward in the framework of the 3P learning model. The participants' perceptions of this technique were analyzed according to each variable, both overall and by gender, via a questionnaire of our own making, which had previously been validated by AR experts, analyzing its psychometric qualities. The initial results indicate that this technique is, according to the students, useful for teaching the curriculum. The conclusion is that AR can increase students' motivation and enthusiasm while enhancing teaching and learning at the same time.Appl. Sci. 2019, 9, 5426 2 of 16 of AR and boost its development, showing how satisfaction, motivation and other positive variables are manifested in the participants in a noticeable way after its implementation.
Conceptualization and TerminologyCaudell and Mizell [4], who coined the concept, define AR as a technology that enhances the user's field of vision with the information necessary to perform a task, thanks to computational processes that can transform and chart simple graphics in real time. Milgram and Kishino [5] add to this definition when they describe AR as any case in which a real environment is enhanced with virtual objects (computer graphics). Likewise, they present the term within a taxonomy (a virtuality continuum), in which all the possible types of viewing appear. Within this continuum, the real and virtual elements coexist in a single mixed reality space where AR is closer to the entirely real environment than to the entirely virtual environment. Another pioneer, Azuma [6], sees AR as a variation of virtual environments which enables the user to see reality through superimposed objects.It is noteworthy that some authors [7,8] have contradicted the idea of presenting AR conceptually as a technology in the strict sense, since it can be based on technology or understood as a resource that can accompany technology or draw from it, which means that it is necessary to interpret it beyond this exclusively classificatory treatment. Hence, one approach to this issue could be that AR is an emerging technique which is mediated by technology and which enables the superimposition of virtual information on a real environment, thus facilitating access to the borders of mixed reality, which can be two-or three-dimensional.