The Effects of Augmented Reality (AR) on Students' Learning Outcomes of Cognitive Domain: A Meta-analysis

Abstract

The cognitive domain is one of the three major domains in Bloom's classification system of teaching objectives (Li & Chen， 2015). Augmented reality (AR) is more and more used in the cognitive field of teaching process because of its recognized efficacy. However, most of these studies are qualitative and do not measure the impact of AR on the cognitive domain. This article used the statistical analysis method to investigate the screened 78 relevant studies from 2010-2021. There are three aims of this study: (1) to determine the efficiency of AR on learners’ outcomes of cognitive domain; (2) to determine the effects of AR technology in the three dimensions of memory, comprehension, and application in the cognitive process; (3) to determine the effects of different moderating variables on the cognitive domain outcomes in the AR instructional process. The results showed that AR technology had a positive impact on the cognitive domain outcomes of learners (d=0.698,p<.001), and the impact of AR technology on the application and memory dimensions was better than that on the comprehension dimension; different disciplines and academic levels also had a significant impact on the cognitive domain outcomes, and the impact of skill and language disciplines was better than that of experience and discursive disciplines. The teaching impact of college students was better than that of primary and secondary students. There was no significant difference in the moderating effect of instructional method and resource type. Therefore, the study revealed that the involvement of AR technology in teaching and learning should be based on the content of the subject and the age characteristics of students.