Exploring Children’s Interaction with AR to Enhance Spatial Skills: Case Study on Geometry Learning

Spatial skills are fundamental cognitive abilities crucial for daily tasks and career development, especially within STEM fields. While research has established that Augmented Reality (AR) technology provides interactive and immersive experiences to enhance children’s spatial skills, a gap exists in understanding how children interact with AR environments to develop these skills. This study observed and analysed children’s interactions within an AR learning case on orthographic projection, aiming to elucidate how their interactions contribute to spatial skill development. The findings suggest that AR interactions enhance spatial skills through various mechanisms. Firstly, by constructing and manipulating virtual objects, children refined their mental representations and coordinated their components, improving their mental models’ accuracy and complexity. Secondly, through movement and adjustments of body postures in space, children utilised space and their bodies as mediums to construct and acquire additional spatial information. Furthermore, children developed rules and strategies for applying spatial skills within the AR environment, facilitating problem-solving. Future research should explore interaction patterns using learning analytics and include additional case studies for a comprehensive investigation.