Examining Relationship between Biology Attitudes and Perceptions toward Mobile Augmented Reality of Photosynthesis and Impact on Gender Difference

Abstract

New possibilities for teaching and learning provided by augmented reality (AR) have been increasingly recognized by educational researchers. In science education, AR allows learners to visualize complex spatial relationships and abstract concepts and experience natural phenomena that are not possible in the real world in way of the mixed reality. Due to the abovementioned benefits, a mobile AR represented photosynthesis process has been designed and created for enhancing biology learning by the researchers. 101 eleventh - grade students aging 16-18 years old were recruited to participate in this study, to investigate the relationship between attitude toward biology and perception toward mobile AR and compare the perception towards augmented reality tool within the disparity of gender. They were 71 females and 30 males, and all of them were administered with 25-items biology attitude questionnaire and 18-items perception toward mobile AR. The results of this study suggest that students’ perception toward augmented reality technology was not defined by their attitudes toward biology, and the disparity of gender did not effect to perception toward learning with mobile AR technology. This implied that any gender could learn biology of photosynthesis with the use of AR technology, and they could participate to learn biology through mobile AR disregarding biology attitude.