The effect of teaching supported by augmented reality application on students' unit-based achievements and opinions

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of teaching the 5th grade living world unit with augmented reality (AR) applications on students' academic achievements and to examine the students' opinions about the augmented reality applications. For this purpose, an AR application was developed for the "World of Living Things" unit of the 5th grade science course. A quasi-experimental model with a pretest-posttest control group was preferred in the study. The study group of the research consisted of 62 students studying at a public school. In line with the pretest-posttest control group model, the study group was divided into two randomly selected groups. The living world unit was taught to 32 students in the experimental group from these two groups using AR application. This unit was taught to 30 students in the control group using methods and techniques in accordance with the 2018 science curriculum. In order to investigate the effectiveness of the application, the "Living World Academic Achievement Test" was applied to both the control and experimental groups as pretest and posttest, and the "Interview Form" was applied to only the experimental group after the application. In the analysis of quantitative data, independent samples t-test were used. Qualitative data were analyzed using the content analysis technique. According to the analysis results, a significant difference emerged between the experimental group students who taught the course with the AR application and the control group students in favor of the experimental group. When qualitative data was analyzed, students stated that they found AR applications fun and instructive and that they wanted to use these applications in other subjects and courses.