Effectiveness Study of an Augmented Reality App as Preparation Tool for Electrical Engineering Laboratory Courses

An Augmented Reality Application (AR App) called PEARL has been developed at the Paderborn University to prepare electrical engineering students for the compulsory laboratory work. The App enables students to familiarize themselves with laboratory equipment such as oscilloscope in an intuitive and realistic way, independent of time and location constraints. An effectiveness study with pre and post-test design has been conducted with students from two universities in order to investigate the effects of PEARL concerning the knowledge and motorical skill gain. To do so, the students were divided into two groups, an intervention group (IG) using PEARL and a control group (CG) having only access to classical preparation materials. The results show that both, the IG and CG have growth in all skill levels that were measured by the online test. However, there is no significant difference between IG and CG. This is also true for the questionnaire regarding students anxiety before lab work, experiment-related self-concept and general experimental interest. Both groups have a significant improvement on these affective components at the respective times, but no group difference could be measured.