Instructional design for AR learning experiences: impact on academic engagement

Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a revolutionary tool in the educational domain, offering new forms of interaction and learning. Recent studies have shown that AR can significantly increase student motivation and engagement by allowing them to interact with content in a more immersive manner. Furthermore, AR facilitates the visualization of abstract concepts, making learning more acces-sible and comprehensible for students of varying levels. Despite these benefits, its integration into mainstream courses presents several challenges to its imple-mentation. This study aims at assessing a technological instructional design con-ceived to promote academic engagement in an AR-supported course. A quasi-experimental design was adopted based on the research-by-design methodology. The intervention with 160 high school students was facilitated through the Edu-AR platform, which offers various AR resources. The results indicated that the experimental group showed a significant increase in academic engagement com-pared to the control group. Qualitative findings revealed that structured AR activi-ties were highly engaging and helped students understand complex concepts, though technical challenges and the need for teacher training were noted. These findings suggest that a systematic and continuous approach to AR integration can positively influence student engagement and offer new perspectives for educators and instructional designers. The study highlights the importance of incorporating AR in a planned manner and providing ongoing support to teachers to maximize its educational potential.