The effect of augmented reality applications on academic achievement, attitudes and spatial visualization skills of vocational school students in technical drawing course

The evolving technology has brought innovations and new learning needs to our life. The design of our education system has created a whole new generation of students who have been transformed by technology today. The first generation of this kind of digital natives is high school students. It is imperative to create educational environments that are compatible with digital native features. For this reason, it is necessary to benefit from the developments in educational technologies. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of using the material of the technical visual arts lessons on the visualization skills and attitudes. For this purpose, an augmented reality application is designed. This application includes the "Projection and Appearance Removal" units of the Technical Drawing course. The educational material was named BTRS by the researcher. The application is designed using Unity3D, 3Ds Max and Vuforia programs. An 8-week training program was prepared to enhance the learning effect of BTRS application. The material development took place in two steps, pilot study and actual use. The study was conducted for 8 weeks with a total of 33 students (26 boys and 7 girls) attending Izmir Cigli Rotary Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School. In the study, the sequential explanatory design of Creswell was used for mixed methods. While semi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used for the quantitative part of the study, semi-structured interviews were used for the qualitative part. "Lappan Spatial Visualization Skill Scale", "Purdue Spatial Skill Scale", "AR Attitude Scale" and semi-structured interview form were used at the beginning and at the end of the application. Shapiro-Wilk Normality Test and Levene Homogeneity Test were performed on the data obtained from these scales. The Mann-Whitney U and paired-samples t-test, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for quantitative data. Qualitative data were analyzed by descriptive analysis method. The results of the study indicated that the Augmented Reality Application did not have a significant effect on the achievement of the students and their spatial skills. However, it has been observed that the excitement and curiosity of students were increased. The students reported that the material was enjoyable, fun, interesting, remarkable, useful, easy to use, understandable and persistent. Students should try to discover the contents of the application so that they can be motivated for longer. Rotating, zooming, and moving interactive digital models and buttons on the real world have attracted the students. The experimental group described the concepts that are abstract and require spatial thinking skills to be clearer and more practical. However, the use of this material takes long time during the class. As a result, it has been determined that Augmented Reality technology has no effect on students' achievement, spatial skills and attitudes. Therefore, dissemination of Augmented Reality applications will be useful in educational environments.