Attitudes of gifted students towards augmented reality and their opinions about augmented reality applications in Social Studies courses

The purpose of this research is to determine the attitudes of gifted students towards AR and their opinions about AR applications in Social Studies courses. Within the scope of this research, a mixed method study for AR applications was conducted with gifted students going to the SAC in Afyonkarahisar city center in the 2020-2021 academic year within the framework of the Social Studies course. The quantitative part of the study was studied with 167 students and the qualitative part with 29 students. In this study, the parallel design converging from the mixed method designs was used, and the data required for the research were collected using the "Personal Information Form", "Augmented Reality Applications Attitude Scale" and "Student Interview Form". In order to measure students' attitudes towards AR applications, the Augmented Reality Applications Attitude Scale-ARASS developed by Küçük, Yılmaz, Baydaş, and Göktaş (2014) was used. The quantitative data of the study were analyzed with a statistical program and arithmetic mean, percentage, frequency, t test, anova and one-way analysis of variance and Tukey test were used in the analysis of quantitative data. Descriptive analysis was applied on qualitative data. The results obtained as a result of the research can be summarized as follows; According to the quantitative results, it was seen that the level of attitude towards the use of AR in the Social Studies course of the gifted students, who made up the study group of the research, was high. Among the participants in the study, the AR attitude levels of the students studying in the field of general ability were higher than the students studying in the field of music, and that students who have used AR before have a higher level of attitude than students who have not used AR before. According to the qualitative results; it has been revealed that the students wanted AR technology to be used by teachers and students, that they had a more enjoyable process in the lessons they used AR, and that the information learned in this way was more permanent; It has been found out that the use of AR in lessons has results that will positively affect the learning process, such as making it easier to understand and saving the lesson from boringness. The qualitative and quantitative results obtained within the scope of the research were integrated under the title of conclusion and discussion and discussed in the light of related studies. Finally, suggestions were made based on the research results and the researcher's experiences.