Are Reality, Simulation, and Augmented Reality Interchangeable?

Abstract

Students often ask why they should learn or where they would use this knowledge when learning. Real-life experiences make learning more meaningful for the students. Thus, learning environments where the students could acquire real-life experiences are important. However, due to the student profile, crowded classes, inadequate course hours, technological advances, natural disasters, etc., conventional instruction methods could not meet student requirements and they could not practice. This negatively affects learning achievements and psychomotor skills of the students. Effective real-life educational experiences are required to improve learning achievements and psychomotor skills of the students. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate learning achievement and psychomotor skills levels of college students in the ICT course and substitution of augmented reality applications and simulations with real-life experiences. The study data were collected from 63 college students. Descriptive statistics, two-way ANOVA, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test analysis were employed to answer the research questions. The findings demonstrated that augmented reality and simulation-assisted learning environments were as effective as real-life learning environments in the improvement of the learning achievements and psychomotor skills of the students in the ICT course. Thus, it could be suggested that augmented reality or simulation applications could be employed in learning environments that lack real-life experiences.