1 Department of Journalism, Center for Emerging Media Design and Development, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.
2 Department of Media and Information, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2019 Feb;22(2):105-110. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2018.0150. Epub 2019 Jan 18.
The propagation of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications that leverage smartphone technology has increased along with the ubiquity of smartphone adoption. Although AR and VR technologies have been widely utilized in the educational domain, there remains a dearth of empirical research examining the differences in educational impact across AR and VR technologies. The purpose of our exploratory study was to address this gap in the literature by comparing AR and VR technologies with regard to their impact on learning outcomes, such as retention of science information. Specifically, we use a two-condition (AR vs. VR) between-subjects' design to test college students' science-knowledge retention in response to both auditory and visual information presented on a Samsung S4 smartphone app. Our results (N = 109) suggest that VR is more immersive and engaging through the mechanism of spatial presence. However, AR seems to be a more effective medium for conveying auditory information through the pathway of spatial presence, possibly because of increased cognitive demands associated with immersive experiences. Thus, an important implication for design is that educational content should be integrated into visual modalities when the experience will be consumed in VR, but into auditory modalities when it will be consumed in AR.
智能手机技术推动了增强现实（AR）和虚拟现实（VR）应用的普及，这两种应用的传播也随之增加。虽然 AR 和 VR 技术已经在教育领域得到广泛应用，但关于这两种技术对教育影响的差异的实证研究仍然很少。我们的探索性研究旨在通过比较 AR 和 VR 技术在学习成果（如科学信息的保留）方面的影响来填补这一文献空白。具体来说，我们使用了一种有两个条件（AR 与 VR）的被试间设计，来测试大学生对三星 S4 智能手机应用程序中呈现的听觉和视觉信息的科学知识保留情况。我们的结果（N=109）表明，通过空间存在感的机制，VR 更加身临其境和吸引人。然而，AR 似乎通过空间存在感的途径更有效地传递听觉信息，这可能是因为与沉浸式体验相关的认知需求增加了。因此，对于设计来说，一个重要的启示是，当体验将在 VR 中消费时，教育内容应该整合到视觉模式中，而当它将在 AR 中消费时，应该整合到听觉模式中。
