The AHA Project: An Evidence-Based Augmented Reality Intervention for the Improvement of Reading and Spelling Skills in Children with ADHD

Exploring the effect of an augmented reality literacy programme for reading and spelling difficulties for children diagnosed with ADHD

“…Specifically, at the completion of each level of the WWL programme, users are required to fill in a questionnaire evaluating their acquisition of the literacy skills promoted by the learning materials included in the level. As a consequence, the questionnaires provides measures of acquired literacy skills from the ability to correctly link speech sounds (phonemes) with their letter representations (taught at level 1) to the correct use of prefixes and two-syllable and complex suffixes, and common word endings (see Mangina, 2018 for an overview of literacy skills taught at each level). There are seven levels within the WWL literacy skills intervention; however, children with good literacy skills are not required to complete level 2.…”

“…Parents and teachers of each child participating in the pilot (WWL-AR and WWL groups) were asked to act as observers of their pupils' activities during the intervention. Before beginning participation, parents and teachers were asked to carefully read the "AHA Teacher and Parent Guide" (Mangina 2018). The guide contains a description of the AHA pilot and system, and detailed instructions on the WWL programme, use of AR objects and of the designed tool for observing and rating children's off-task behaviour.…”

“…The AHA (ADHD-Augmented) project 1 developed the AHA system as an integrated web-based AR learning environment on the basis of theoretical considerations and evidence provided by existing research. The AHA system aims at implementing an evidence-based intervention to quantitatively and qualitatively study the effect of AR on reading and spelling performances and levels of engagement with tasks of primary school pupils diagnosed with ADHD in a learning environment (Chiazzese et al 2018).…”

“…Following the pre-test assessment, students assigned to both the WWL and WWL-AR conditions were asked to use the application (AHA or WWL according to the condition they were assigned to) both at school and home with the support of an adult (teacher or parent/guardian depending on the intervention setting). The students, teachers, and parents were given a recommended schedule of work, ideally to be completed 5 days a week, and each session was to last approximately 15 min (Mangina, 2018). This was ample time to complete the programme over the project duration, if the schedule was followed as directed.…”

Current Challenges and Future Research Directions in Augmented Reality for Education

“…It further developed as AHA project in extended study as a Web based AR learning system [72]. Their evaluation study highlighted the potential of AR for interactive learning and allowing users to become more engaged with learning content [73]. It provides opportunities for additional educational engagement and process reiteration for learners.…”