Sustainable life education enriched with augmented reality: The effect of ECohool mobile application on secondary school students' ecological footprint and sustainable life awareness

The main purpose of this research is to determine the awareness levels of middle school students regarding ecological footprint and sustainable living through the design and development of a mobile application called ECohool, which is enriched with augmented reality for sustainable living. The mobile application development process of the research was conducted within the framework of design-based research model. The quantitative dimension of this research was designed as a single-group pre-test-post-test quasi-experimental model. The study group of the research consists of a total of 105 students, including eighth and seventh graders, continuing their education in a private school located in the center of Kırşehir Province in the 2023-2024 academic year. In order to collect quantitative data in the research, the "Ecological Footprint Awareness Scale" and the "Sustainable Living Awareness Scale" were used. In addition, a semi-structured interview form was used to collect qualitative data. Descriptive statistical techniques were used in the analysis of the obtained data. Research findings show that the ECohool mobile application enriched with augmented reality provides a statistically significant difference in the awareness levels of 7th and 8th grade students regarding ecological footprint and sustainable living after the application. When the mean scores of ecological footprint and sustainable living awareness were examined according to the grade variable, it was observed that there was a significant difference in favor of the 8th grade students participating in the research. In light of the qualitative findings of the research, 8th grade students stated that the developed mobile application design was very good, they enjoyed using the application, the application questions were easy, they experienced technological problems arising from the devices they used, and they expressed the opinion that the number of games and sections related to sustainable living should be increased for the redesign of the application. The ECohool mobile augmented reality application developed in this research can be tested with different age groups and larger samples.