Radford Outdoor Augmented Reality (ROAR) Project: Immersive Participatory Augmented Reality Simulations for Teaching and Learning Science

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This project anticipates the needs of learners in ten years by developing and testing two learning simulations that are immersive, interactive and participatory and use augmented reality in the outdoors. The students (each with a separate role to play) work in teams to investigate phenomena and solve problems in a gaming environment using wireless handheld GPS units. This model leverages devices that students already own and use in their extracurricular activities and gets students out of the classroom to play the game in their local environments, allowing for the construction of knowledge that is situated and tacit. Using a design-based, mixed methods approach, the researchers examine the relationships among augmented reality, learning in science, socio-emotional outcomes (engagement and self-efficacy) and the demographic characteristics of rural, underserved students in a few middle schools in southwest Virginia. Quantitative instrumentation is developed to clarify the conceptual foundations and identify contextual factors that could lead to general conditions for successful educational use of augmented reality. In addition, the researchers document teachers' and students' descriptions of how participating in a technology-mediated narrative in the outdoor Augmented reality simulation enhances or impedes teaching and learning science and mathematics concepts.