Can an Augmented Reality-Integrated Gamification Approach Enhance Vocational High School Students' Learning Outcomes and Motivation in an Electronics Course?

An augmented reality (AR)-integrated gamification learning approach in an electronics course was developed in this study to help students better understand the concepts while simultaneously increasing their motivation. An experimental study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the AR-integrated gamification approach on students' learning outcomes and motivation. A total of 29 vocational high school students was divided into two groups. The experimental group experienced AR-integrated gamification while the control group adopted conventional gamification. The results indicated that students in the AR-integrated gamification approach outperformed the conventional gamification group in the psychomotor learning outcomes, but no significant difference was found in cognitive and affective domains between the two groups. Concerning learning motivation, the experimental group only performed better intrinsic goal orientation than the control group while the other categories of motivation were insignificant. To compare the pretest and posttest in each group, the experimental group gained higher posttest scores in all domains of learning outcomes than the pretest scores after the intervention, but the control group only improved cognitive and psychomotor domains. Regarding learning motivation, the proposed approach pointed out the better posttest scores in all components compared to the pretest scores in the experimental group while only the posttest scores of extrinsic goal orientation, task value, and control beliefs about learning were higher than the pretest scores in the control group. The practical implications and recommendations for future work are presented.