Scoping the window to the universe; Design considerations and expert evaluation of an augmented reality mobile application for astronomy education

Abstract

Astronomy is a difficult to teach topic in primary education because its core concepts and topics have no relevance or fly contrary to pupils’ limited observational perceptions. Augmented Reality (AR) experiential technologies offer a unique opportunity for enriching the observations of young pupils with engaging and scientifically valid educational content. This work describes the implementation details of a mobile AR application for astronomy education. A simple but pedagogically sound design and implementation process was followed and a detailed pupil evaluation strategy has been developed. The application has been presented to 15 primary school teachers and evaluated both on cognitive and affective axes. Cognitively, the difficulty of the content has been deemed adequate without challenge spikes, while affectively the application’s only weakness has been identified as the lack of strong collaborative and personalization elements. These outcomes shall form the basis for future iterations of this work utilizing a participatory design strategy for a collaborative, personalized educational experience.