USING FORMATIVE MEASUREMENT MODELS TO EVALUATE THE EDUCATIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL VALUE OF AN AR-BASED APPLICATION

With the explosion of new technologies for e-learning there is an increasing demand to assess the educational and motivational value of a new application. Augmented reality (AR) is a promising technology that creates new learning experiences by integrating real objects from the traditional school into a computing environment. A research challenge is to better understand the relationships between various factors of interest for the successful deployment of educational systems in primary and secondary schools. There are several approaches to evaluation that are based on quantitative methods. In recent years there is an increasing interest in taking an alternative perspective to measurement by using formatively measured constructs. This paper will highlight several benefits in using formative measurement models to evaluate the educational and motivational value of an AR-based e-learning application. The evaluation target is a Chemistry learning scenario that has been developed in the European project ARiSE – Augmented Reality in School Environment. Based on our previous work we developed a new evaluation instrument that includes both reflectively and formatively measured constructs to evaluate the ergonomic, educational, and motivational quality of a desktop AR application. The preliminary results from a pilot study show the extent to which specific features of the Chemistry scenario are positively influencing the educational and motivational value.