Augmented Reality (AR) superimposes virtual objects to the physical environment, enabling augmented experiences to users. AR has been applied to a variety of fields including education offering immersive, authentic, and meaningful learning experiences to students. Research reports that AR, if it is applied appropriately, can have a positive impact on educational settings. AR enables visualisation of abstract concepts, enhances long-term retention, increases learning motivation and engagement and can improve learning achievement (Akçayır, & Akçayır, 2017; Garzón, Pavón, & Baldiris, 2019). Immersive technologies have the potential to transform education by enabling learning experiences that otherwise are inaccessible, expensive, or even dangerous (Jesionkowska, Wild, & Deval, 2020).  According to the “VR/AR Industrial Coalition: strategic paper” published be the European commission (2022), AR/VR is very much related to the development of pupils and students, and with its potential as a tool for remote learning, it can support education in remote and rural areas, improving access to education. As declared in the Future of Education Briefing Notes (UN Secretary-General, 2022) released during the Transforming Education Summit 2022, in order for the digital transformation of education to happen, teachers should harness the power of technology and be able to be become micro-curriculum designers and content developers.  While AR can offer new opportunities and transform education, its use in classrooms is rather limited. There are numerous challenges associated with the integration of AR in education. Two of these challenges are the lack of teachers’ digital skills to use AR in the classroom (Nikou, Perifanou, Economides, 2022) and the lack of experience in employing AR in the learning design (Ibáñez & Delgado-Kloos, 2018). Teacher education should build the technological and instructional design capacity of preservice teachers enabling them to “be at the frontlines of helping students to navigate their changing world in contextually relevant and age-appropriate way” (UN Secretary-General, 2022).  However, while AR technology has come popular in areas such as mathematics and science, few teachers use this technology in science classes (Perifanou, Econmides & Nikou, 2023) and little research exists on how to introduce and integrate AR with specific pedagogical methods to teach science (Arici et al 2019). The current study investigates the use of AR in a Design-Based Learning (DBL) approach to teach Physics in preservice teachers’ education. The study is aiming also at exploring preservice teachers’ views about the integration of AR in Physics teaching. Design-Based Learning is a student-based learning approach, grounded in constructionism that requires students to use their theoretical knowledge to develop an artifact or a solution to a real-life problem (Ariff, & Nurulaini, 2022; Han & Bhattacharya, 2001). The rationale of choosing the DBL approach is because it promotes critical thinking and creativity (Gómez Puente, van Eijck, & Jochems, 2013) and it is appropriate for science teaching (Ibáñez & Delgado-Kloos, 2018). The DBL process typically consists of four main phases: problem understanding, information gathering, solution generation, and evaluation (Puntambekar & Kolodner, 2005). The current study is aiming to investigate the use of AR in a design-based learning approach to teach Physics to pre-service teachers. Specifically, the study aims to answer the following questions:

1. How Design-Based Learning Augmented Reality can be deployed in preservice teachers’ Physics education?
2. What are preservice teachers’ views about Design-Based Learning Augmented Reality in teaching Physics?

This is a work-in-progress study conducted in the context of a 3rd year undergraduate module on teaching Science in the Primary classroom. The study, after having granted ethics approval from the School of Education Ethics Committee, has started during the fall semester 2022 and it is ongoing. The current proposal aims to report preliminary results from an initial stage. Twenty-five pre-service teachers (eighteen females and seven males) participated in a two-hours session on using AR to develop a digital artefact to teach Physics to primary class pupils. Participants had never had before any experience with AR expect general information about this technology. However, they had already had a class on the Physics topic under discussion (Forces). The overall learning objective of the session was to design a simple AR experience on teaching forces to primary school pupils. The instructional method used was learning-by-design: pre-service teachers actively engaged in a meaningful construction of an AR experience, reflecting their cognitive artifact (i.e., their knowledge and skills) for their target audience (Sarfo, 2012). During the first hour of the session, participants have been given a tutorial on the AR creation platform BlippAR (https://www.blippar.com/). The tutorial covered the basic steps of the AR building process: introduction to the development environment, how to upload assets, how to resize and move objects around the stage, how to create simple animations and how view the AR project on a mobile device. During the second hour of the session, participants were asked to create a simple AR experience demonstrating the impact that forces have when apply to objects. i.e.to set a still object in motion, to change its velocity (magnitude and/or direction) or to change its shape. Participants worked in groups or individually. To facilitate the process, the graphics files with the objects used and the triggers to be recognised by the application (images with gravitational and electric forces) were made available to participants along with instructions. Participants developed various scenarios demonstrating the impact that forces (gravitational of electrostatic) can have on objects. In order to capture teachers’ views on the use of AR in teaching Physics, we have developed and used an online questionnaire with open-ended questions (Yin, 2003). An inductive content analysis followed searching for evidence on the use of AR in DBL and teachers’ views. Preliminary results of the analysis of the open-ended questions are presented.

The open-ended survey questionnaire gathered participants’ views about the use of AR in design-based learning to teach Physics. Preliminary findings revealed that a few patterns emerge. Regarding the open question “What educational opportunities AR can offer to students to stimulate and support their learning?” most participants agreed that AR can generate feelings of immersion and presence and can motivate and engage students. It can support interactivity and playfulness and thus can make learning fun, motivating and engaging. Participants agreed that AR can be a complementary method to teach Physics and they would be willing to use AR to teach primary school Physics. However, they emphasized the need for the proper infrastructure and support as well as teacher training that can facilitate the use of AR in the classroom. Our findings agree with previous studies on intention to use educational AR (Perifanou, Econmides & Nikou, 2023; Mikropoulos, Delimitros, & Koutromanos, 2022). The analysis of data is ongoing. We are also aiming to gather more data to extend our analysis and strengthen our findings. Current research (Ibáñez & Delgado-Kloos, 2018) suggests that more qualitative research is needed to obtain more in-depth information on the use of AR in science education. Our study will provide extra evidence on preservice teachers’ views on using AR to teach Physics. Moreover, it is aiming at proposing an AR-based design-based learning approach in the context of teaching Physics to preservice teachers. Findings can be useful to educators, instructional designers and AR developers to design appropriate educational AR applications.

Akçayır, M., Akçayır, G. (2017). Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: a systematic review of the literature. Educ. Res. Rev. 20, 1–11. Arici, F., Yildirim, P,. Caliklar, S. & Yilmaz,R.M. (2019). Research trends in the use of augmented reality in science education: Content and bibliometric mapping analysis, Computers & Education, 142, 103647. Ariff, A.S., & Nurulaini. A.S. (2022). Design-Based Learning as a Pedagogical Approach in an Online Learning Environment for Science Undergraduate Students, Frontiers in Education, 7. European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Vigkos, A., Bevacqua, D., Turturro, L. (2022). VR/AR Industrial Coalition : strategic paper, Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2759/197536 Garzón, J., Pavón, J. & Baldiris, S. (2019). Systematic review and meta-analysis of augmented reality in educational settings. Virtual Reality 23, 447–459. Gómez Puente, S.M., van Eijck, M., & Jochems, W. (2013). A sampled literature review of design-based learning approaches: A search for key characteristics, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 23, 717. Han, S., & Bhattacharya, K. (2001). Constructionism, learning by design, and project-based learning. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Ibáñez, M.B., & Delgado-Kloos, C. (2018). Augmented reality for STEM learning: A systematic review, Computers & Education, 123, 109-123. Jesionkowska, J. Wild, F. & Deval, Y. (2020). Active Learning Augmented Reality for STEAM Education—A Case Study. Educ. Sci. 10, 198. Mikropoulos, T.A., Delimitros, M. & Koutromanos, G. (2022). Investigating the Mobile Augmented Reality Acceptance Model with Pre-Service Teachers, 2022 8th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), Vienna, Austria, pp. 1-8. Nikou, S.A., Perifanou, M., & Economides, A.A. (2022). Towards a Teachers’ Augmented Reality Competencies (TARC) Framework. In: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 411. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96296-8_19 Perifanou M., Economides A.A., & Nikou S.A. (2023). Teachers’ Views on Integrating Augmented Reality in Education: Needs, Opportunities, Challenges and Recommendations, Future Internet, 15(1), 20. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi15010020 Puntambekar, S., & Kolodner, J. L. (2005). Toward implementing distributed scaffolding: Helping students learn science from design. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42(2), 185-217. Sarfo, K.F. (2012). Learning by Design. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. UN Secretary-General (2022). Future of Education Briefing Notes, Transforming Education Summit, 2022. Yin, R.K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd ed.; Applied Social Research Methods Series V. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA.