Effect of AR-based online wearable guides on university students’ situational interest and learning performance

This study addresses whether augmented reality (AR)-based online wearable guides are better at improving learners’ situational interest (with regard to the fields of novelty, challenge, attention demand, exploration intention, instant enjoyment, and total interest) and learning achievement (remembering, understanding, and analyzing) compared with audio guides. This study employed a museum as its research site and examined a total of 96 participants who were randomly divided into two groups: one group using AR-based online wearable guides and the other using audio guides. In the experiment, both groups were required to complete a prior knowledge quiz, a scale of situational interest, and a test of learning achievement, as well as contributing post-activity open-format feedback. The results of this study indicate that situational interest and the remembering dimension of learning achievement have a significant and positive correlation, and that, when compared with the audio guide, the AR-based online wearable guide increased the learners’ situational interest and instant enjoyment, as well as the remembering dimension of learning performance. Therefore, the AR-based online wearable guide exhibits the ability to cultivate long-term interest in informal curricula. It is suggested that, when applying AR-based online wearable guides in informal curricula, content difficulty levels should be designed appropriately so that the learners’ instant enjoyment, situational interest, and content remembering performance would not be undermined.