Augmented reality in education for industry 4.0: What are the barriers to adoption?

Abstract

One of the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 is augmented reality. Augmented reality is currently supported on mobile devices and often does not require costly equipment, allowing it to expand quickly across industries such as entertainment and healthcare. Studies in education demonstrate that augmented reality can improve conceptual comprehension and learning in STEM fields and that educational organizations and teachers support its use. However, augmented reality is still used in only a few educational establishments. There have been few studies on the topic, raising concerns such as: what are the barriers to broader adoption of this technology? Understanding the issues better would allow educational organizations and instructors to take action to mitigate them. This study aims to identify and categorize the barriers, difficulties, and challenges for the adoption of augmented reality in education. The investigation was conducted in two stages: first, the barriers mentioned in 28 papers published in the Science Direct, Scielo, and Scopus databases were preliminary categorized, and then this categorization was validated by an interdisciplinary focus group of experts in education and industry 4.0. We identified seven categories as barriers to the adoption of augmented reality in education: technical, adoption, usability and user interaction, learning, pedagogical, financial, and technological nature. Our results contribute to mitigate these barriers and encourage actions to increase the potential of augmented reality in education.