As Dünser et al. [5] note, although AR has been in
studied for over forty years it has only been recently
that researchers have begun to formally evaluate AR
applications. They reviewed research publications
between the years 1993 and 2007 related to the AR
field, finding that only ~8% described a formal user
evaluation. This means that in a more restricted scope,
as the educational application of AR, there are a small
number of contributions that focus on user evaluation.
With respect to the immersive nature of the
visualization display, there are interesting
considerations regarding using desktop AR
(visualization in the computer screen). Liarokapis and
Anderson [13] note that participant undergraduate
students at two departments of Informatics and
Information Science in UK preferred the monitorbased
augmentation compared to the head mounted
display (HMD) based augmentation which they found
distracting and difficult to use.
Sometimes, the benefit of AR in educational
contexts is linked only to promote motivation and
engagement among students. For example, Juan et al.
[8] developed an AR game for learning words. Thirty
two children played the game (using an head mounted
display display) and the equivalent real game.
Comparing the results of the two games, they did not
found significant differences between the two games
except for one question: 81% of the children liked most
the AR game.
Design of educational contents must be very careful
done. Park et al. [18] indicate that students’ learning
performance is significantly higher when seductive
details are presented under the low cognitive load
condition (narration). Their findings suggest that the
cognitive processes of selecting relevant information
and organizing this information into a coherent mental
model can be affected not only in a negative way by
seductive details, but also in a positive way if learners
have enough free resources to use this non-redundant
and interesting, but irrelevant learning material.
In this context, it is important to consider the
possible novelty effect associated to a new technology
like AR. Seo et al. [21] note that while 3D interactive
graphics seems natural even to very young children
(due to their exposure to 3D games), AR based
contents are very surprising, thus drawing great interest
and curiosity (at least for now). This situation
represents an important issue due to the difficulty of