Active Learning Augmented Reality for STEAM Education—A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The importance of STEAM education is justified in the introduction. It is obvious for future professions and professional development of students. The wording is clear and adequate.

It is stated that the disaffection of students with STEM subjects will be an economic problem, since they will be responsible for future economic growth and more people with related training will be needed.

However, I do not understand this statement "To address this gap, this study investigates using Augmented Reality to engage students to learn STEAM subjects by developing their own AR applications"

Because, what is addressed are workshops in which a few students are involved, they seem more motivational activities, but there is no link with the official subjects and its curricula. So, there is no subsequent implication, or consequences, in their academic training.

Therefore, although the approach is correct, with workshops outside the official Curriculum, which students attend without knowing how they have been chosen, they do not serve to address the educational problem referred to.

I don’t think that a educational problem could be arranged with non official workshops. These workshops seem more like leisure activities

 

The statement "There has been an historic tendency in the education system to require students to choose between the arts and the sciences" is true.

But it also starts from an incorrect premise: creativity is not just an art thing, research on creativity, divergent thinking in areas such as mathematics and science is well known. They are much-needed skills in problem solving.

It is not only related to appearance, although it is understood that these aspects are important when designing apps, pleasant and attractive.

 

I don't understand why they refer to four groups: teenagers in Oxford, teenagers in Brussels, young professionals in different fields in Taiwan and digital-art students in Mons. It is not known why they referred to these groups, how they were selected and what characteristics these groups had. They are very different from each other, except for the two groups of adolescents because of age, but from very different educational systems. And I don't understand Taiwan's group, nor Mons's. Why were they chosen? I understand that they are very disparate, both in training, knowledge, interests ...

However, they only refer results to one of them: Oxford group. Why?

I don't see the research I don't see the results We do not know what students knew before the workshop, how the workshop activities are connected with their knowledge, with the subjects, and what it is the objective to goal from the educational point of view. These aspects are not mentioned.

The students must have different knowledge, because their ages and educational levels are. They are not comparable.

The results are not such, since it is very subjective, it only comments on individual sentences of the students.

 

It is said that "Pedagogical strategies encouraging students to become actively engaged in their own learning can produce levels of understanding, retention, and transfer of knowledge significantly greater than those resulting from traditional classes".

But they are not regular classes, the students are in workshops, therefore it is not active learning, because it is not applied in the usual subjects. With your regulated CV, your evaluation… .etc.

The role of teachers in workshops is also unknown. They do not talk about their knowledge, their involvement in tasks, how they think or not implement what they see in their usual classrooms.

In the sentence “The positive student feedback and the neutral level of difficulty suggest that methodology can be adopted for the classroom successfully to create an engaging environment for learning, triggering students’ curiosity ”.

It is obvious that the workshops were attractive to the students, but the problem of STEAM and AR is to take it into regular classrooms, with regulated contents and implement these technologies and methodologies in them. You have to connect with these contents, and it is not done.

There is no educational connection, beyond how attractive and motivating a workshop is, but the problem is formal teaching and the use of new technologies in schools.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see comments in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have referenced all observations made.

The paper is clearer, better understood, and all doubtful questions have been resolved.

Researchers have better defined the research problem, the limits of their proposal and the drawbacks of using AR, the fundamental difference between a workshop, with students inclined and willing to carry out the proposed activities, with teaching in an regular classroom, with the Curriculum evaluation system and also as mentioned with the problems involved in the price of required hardware

The problem that I still see is that it is a workshop with 8 students, therefore what is exposed is absolutely particular and exceptional, I understand its value.

The authors justify this by saying that it is a case study.

I agree, it is an interesting experience.

I think it has a great future, if they generalize it and if they manage to imply regulated teaching in it. I encourage the authors to continue in this line.

And, it would be very appropriate if they expanded the bibliographic references. There are many educational experiences related to AR around the world that they would find very useful in this paper and to the future.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for response to my earlier recommendations.

The objective of the paper is a little clearer now and the limitations of the research methodology are acknowledged. However, fundamental issues still remain unaddressed. There is no further detail on the observation data and participation statistics of students in the workshop - nor how you conducted this research. 

The only evidence presented in the paper relates to select quotations from the survey instrument.

For a reader seeking to replicate the methods and approach that you have taken, there is little information in the paper to show how that would be done. At the very least I would hope to see critical commentary in the discussion on how to support student engagement in AR, but this is not touched on.  There is also no data or measures to show the sustainable learning outcomes arising from this workshop or commentary on how they might be measured. Consequently the claim that AR can broaden and deepen student learning is unsubstantiated.

These are fundamental criticisms which need some attention.

The revisions seem to be rushed and the standard of English has declined since the original submission - reflecting that rush to resubmit. Note typos such as 'artictic skills' line 58 (which are not defined); line68 'who was a [sic] simultaneously...'. Note strange expression such a line 117 'discover their own curiosity'. I would getting someone to proof read the script before any further resubmission.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for your responses to the issues that I raised in the second review. I can see that the draft has moved on a little in terms of the description of the workshop methodology that you adopted and there has been some tidying up of the text.

The fundamental criticisms that I raised about the research methods and reporting still remain though, which is why I think this paper would work best as a case study rather than a scientific research paper. A case study can offer a description of a novel approach, which could then help to inform the development of a future research project. This would be a useful contribution to make, with recommendations on how a research study could be conducted and the key variables to address.

Your paper in its current state does not stand up to scrutiny in terms of the claims that you make about student learning, based on the evidence that you present. As a position paper or case study of AR it would be on a safer ground.

As noted in my earlier comments, the absence of ethical clearance for student participation in the study, the opaque nature of the data collection and observation methods that you were used and the paucity of the data that you do present all undermine the validity of the claims that you make in your conclusions. If I take one claim – line 514  -  that this study confirms that AR increased the motivation of workshop participants – this is supported by survey data from only 7 participants who said that they enjoyed the experience and only 5 respondents, which is a third of the total number of students who participated in the workshop, agreeing that the workshop helped them to develop new coding and skills. There is no critical discussion of your results. Only 8 students completed questionnaires – there was no control group for this work – and the student population was self-selecting (i.e. self-motivated participants who opted into following the workshop in the first place). It would be difficult to claim that these were typical students and that your findings are generalisable to wider populations based on this evidence.

 Even with a case study approach, I would still like to see a more critical discussion of the workshop methodology and support to students – it’s unlikely that everything ran smoothly and there must be lessons learned for future workshops to take account of.

There are still issues with the proof reading.  I stopped listing typos after the first couple of pages – but lines such as 147 ‘when student (sic) discover their own curiosity’ don’t make sense, and there is also a fair bit of educational jargon which needs to explained – e.g. ‘attention tunnelling’ (line 135).

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx