Augmented Reality as Educational Tool:

Perceptions, Challenges, and Requirements

from Teachers

Matthias Heintz(B) , Effie Lai-Chong Law, and Pamela Andrade

The University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester L1 7RH, UK

{mmh21,lcl9,pyas2}@leicester.ac.uk

Abstract. In the recent decade the number of augmented reality educational

applications (AR-EAs) has increased, but their actual uptake in real-life contexts
remains low. To identify reasons for the limited uptake and resolutions for this
issue, we conducted a teacher survey. Based on the analysis of 65 valid responses,
we derived teacher requirements that could improve the adoption of AR-EAs.

Keywords: Augmented Reality · Education · Teacher · Survey · UX ·

Requirement

1 Introduction and Background

Augmented Reality (AR) combines real and virtual content, is interactive in real-time,
and registered in 3D [1]. These three characteristics render AR technologies particularly
attractive and useful for educational uses. Consequently, the recent decade has seen a
visible increase in the number of AR educational applications (AR-EAs).
However, according to a recent survey [2] the actual usage of AR-EAs in schools
remains low, limiting the opportunity to unleash the potential benefits of these emergent
educational tools. A critical obstacle is the unavailability of equipment and infrastructure
[2]. The lack of requisite knowledge and skills and thus confidence makes teachers
reluctant to introduce AR-EAs in their teaching [3–6]. As teachers can be key gatekeepers
for the introduction of new technologies to their students, their related perceptions,
experiences and opinions need to be identified, heeded, and valued. Hence, we were
motivated to design and conduct a survey to analyse the usage of AR-EAs from the
teacher perspective, as the related literature is rather thin.
While the AR technology first emerged in the 1960s, the research work on deploying
AR in education has only been published since 2000 (cf. the Scopus database). Given that
students are the bigger target group (based on the teacher to student ratio alone), only a
small number of studies explore exclusively teachers’ views on deploying AR-EAs (e.g.
[3–6]). All four studies had two common shortcomings: the teacher participants involved
had no or little experience in using AR applications and the scale of the individual study
was limited to a certain region of a single country.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

T. De Laet et al. (Eds.): EC-TEL 2021, LNCS 12884, pp. 315–319, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86436-1_27
316 M. Heintz et al.

Meanwhile, several systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on AR-EAs have been con-
ducted (e.g. [7–9]). However, most of these reviews address primarily the educational
impacts. To gain deeper insights into the interaction quality of AR-EAs to inform their
future research and development, we conducted a SLR on AR-EAs designed for K-
12 education by following the related guidelines and principles [10, 11]. The process
resulted in a batch of 49 papers (31 journal, 18 conference). While the complete results
from the student perspective are documented [12], the results from the teacher perspec-
tive are yet to be reported. In fact, the related data on teachers are so meagre that there
is little to present. There are two teacher-specific aspects to report on. First, concerning
the perceived quality of AR-EAs, 36 out of the 49 papers did not take any measures
with teachers. Second, concerning the effectiveness of the AR-EAs for teaching, 46 out
of 49 did not specify it at all. The overall limited attention ascribed to teachers’ percep-
tion of AR-EAs motivated us to conduct a teacher survey. Our main contribution is to
identify teachers’ experience-based needs and requirements for enhancing AR-EAs and
thus their uptake, unleashing the potential of this emerging technology.

2 Method and Results

We created a homegrown survey with closed- and open-ended questions to address
the shortcomings identified in the existing work. Its design was based on our AR/HCI
expertise and inspired by related work and similar surveys [13, 14]. Originally developed
in English, the survey was translated into Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, and Spanish.
Introduction and Section 1: Demographics. The introduction page outlines the pre-
requisite of having used AR for teaching and asks for the teacher’s consent to participate.
The six demographic questions are about the type of school they teach at, gender, age,
country of residence, main teaching subject, and years of teaching experience.

Section 2: General AR Usage for Teaching. A description of AR is given to ensure that

all participants have a similar understanding, followed by 10 questions on the teacher’s
reasons to use AR-EAs, frequency and duration of usage, conditions of usage (i.e. class
size, hardware), confidence in using them, and how the usage can be increased.

Section 3: Most Recent AR Usage for Teaching. Participants are asked to provide the
name of the AR app and (optionally) write a short description. The subsequent ques-
tions ask details about the app usage, the app itself, the perceived usefulness and user
experience of students and teachers with the app, the domain and topic of the app covered,
and the age group of the students using it.
The research work underpinning the survey was run under the auspices of an EU-
funded project. The survey was implemented with the open-source survey tool LimeSur-
vey and was live from September 2020 to March 2021. To reach teacher participants,
the survey was publicised in the news section of the project website, distributed by the
project partners to their networks of teacher and school contacts, and promoted on the
project’s social media channels several times. Altogether there were 1746 visits to the
survey website, only 65 responses were complete (i.e. all the questions of the survey
 Augmented Reality as Educational Tool 317

were answered), resulting in a completion rate of only 3.7%. Like most user-based stud-
ies, our survey was severely affected by the pandemic. However, the low percentage is
also an indicator that the actual usage of AR-EAs in everyday teaching is still a nascent
phenomenon, as having used AR in their teaching was a requirement for teachers to
participate in the survey.
Due to the space constraints we can only report the demographics and usage data
collected, showing the variety within the participants, as well as needs and improvement
suggestions gathered, which have the highest relevance of all the information collected
when it comes to deriving requirements.
The 65 complete responses came from 17 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Israel, Italy, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania,
Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Ukraine) and 2 unspecified
ones. In the sample, 35 teachers were in secondary schools, 27 in primary schools, one
in an infant school, and two in further education colleges. The gender distribution with
44 female and 21 male participants is higher than a typical ratio of 3:1 in the teaching
profession. In terms of age-group, the distribution is as follows: 31–40 (n = 20), 41–50
(n = 26), 51–60 (n = 16), >60 (n = 3). With regard to teaching subjects, the majority of
respondents reported to teach mostly STEM subjects. The average teaching experience
in years was 17.2 (SD = 7.02, Range = 4–45).
The majority of respondents said to have used AR in their teaching for less than a
year (n = 15), between 1–2 years (n = 20), or between 3–4 years (n = 14), whereas
few teachers have used it for more than four years (n = 7); the rest did not specify (n =
9). As for the frequency of usage, several teachers, who used AR weekly or fortnightly
(17%, n = 10), could be considered as active AR users whereas 45% (n = 26) were
moderately active with the usage frequency between monthly and every-three-months.
Nonetheless, 38% (n = 22) of the teachers were less active, using AR educational apps
for teaching every six months or less frequently.
When asked about their needs to increase the usage of AR technologies in their
teaching 44 participants selected the option to have better access to AR hardware, 38
know which AR applications are suitable, 27 find the time, and 19 more help to use AR
apps (Note: they could choose more than one option). When asked to expand about these
needs, most participants said to have significant financial constraints (n = 24) such as
the lack of budget and equipment at their schools, followed by the need of training to
be able to use AR apps (n = 21). Teachers also explained to be facing other types of
restrictions (n = 15) such as the lack of time or national laws forbidding students to use
electronic devices in the classroom. The limited availability of quality materials (n =
18) in AR apps was also mentioned several times by the respondents. At last, technical
improvements (n = 4) on the software were said to be needed for teachers to increase
their usage of AR for teaching.
In answering the question on how existing AR apps could be improved to better
support their teaching, most participants considered that technical enhancements could
benefit them the most. Specifically, they wanted the AR apps to be faster, to have more
functionalities, and to work on different operating systems. Increasing the scope of the
materials available was another common suggestion. There could be more resources that
would help teachers to save time and different applications suitable for the student level,
318 M. Heintz et al.

which should include not only a larger catalogue of apps, resources, and scenarios, but
also their availability in different languages.
Based on the survey results, three types of user (teacher) requirements have been
derived, namely, functional requirements (i.e. what the system should do, e.g. ‘AR
apps should support different styles of presentation (e.g. teacher to class, students in
groups, or students individually).’), non-functional requirements (i.e. quality in use
that the system should satisfy, e.g. ‘AR apps should be usable and learnable.’), as well as
organisational and pedagogical requirements (i.e. enabling teachers to deploy AR as
educational tool, e.g. ‘School management should care about providing the appropriate
infrastructure and hardware/equipment, including the Internet and mobile devices to
run AR apps (tablets, smartphones), and ease regulatory constraints.’).

3 Discussion and Limitations

The survey responses show clearly that teacher needs are not only technical but also
financial and organisational. Besides highly usable and useful software they need more
access to hardware and training in order to use AR more often in their teaching. The
availability of basic hardware like mobile phones, tablets, and computers with camera
for running AR applications is generally low. Hence, the need for even more expensive
equipment, like HMDs, to support cutting-edge AR apps as currently developed in the
general AR research community, seems very difficult to meet.
Furthermore, the teachers pointed out that a repository of apps and lessons on top-
ics from their countries’ curricula would be ideal for them to best utilize these tools
and their time. Nonetheless, ready-made materials, while convenient, may not be able
to address particularities of specific learning contexts. Hence, it is recommendable to
provide teachers with usable and useful authoring tools. Such tools can support teachers
to customize the existing as well as create new contents to meet their specific needs.
There are some limitations of our study. First, the inherent drawbacks of using survey
as a research method are applicable, including the lack of opportunity to ask follow-up
questions or clarify responses as well as the constraint of given options, although the
option “other” is included for participants to elaborate. Second, the sample size was low,
which could partly be attributed to the pandemic and partly to the screening criterion
(i.e. experience in using AR for teaching was a prerequisite).

4 Conclusion and Future Work

To capture user requirements for future development of AR we developed a survey to
explore teachers’ general as well as specific needs in respect to AR apps for educational
purposes. Overall, the majority of the participants recognised the potential of AR as
educational tool, given its interactivity and visualization effect. However, they pointed
out the different challenges – technical, financial, pedagogical and organisational – that
need to be overcome to enhance the uptake of AR in real life teaching. These findings
support the results of previous work [2–6] while at the same time expanding on it.
 Augmented Reality as Educational Tool 319

The functional and non-functional requirements we derived, albeit not particularly

fine-grained, can serve as relevant factors for designers and developers to consider when
creating AR-EAs. To address the pedagogical and organisational requirements, it is
necessary to mobilise professional bodies such as teacher associations and negotiate with
policymakers to invest sufficient resources in requisite infrastructure and equipment.

Acknowledgement. The publication has been supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation program under grant agreement No 856533, project ARETE.

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