Augmented Reality as a Motivational Tool: Students' Engagement in Learning History

In Malaysia, history lessons are depending on the text-based instruction, which limits student engagement and increase the historical concepts. This study aimed to explore history teachers’’ experiences and challenges in integrating Augmented Reality (AR) as a tool to improve student motivation and engagement in the classroom. A quantitative survey was used in the data collection that involving 31 history teachers across Malaysia which selected through convenience sampling. Google Form as a validated online questionnaire to collect data and analyzed through descriptive statistics. The result shown that 87.1% of teachers are confident in using technology and 67.7% have used AR application in teaching and learning process. In addition, there are actually 41.9% used AR applications, which means there are a gap between knowing them and using it. The biggest obstacles in applying AR are limited technological resources (54.8%) and lack of training between teachers (16.1%). Therefore, 77.4% of participant said they were interested in AR applications that combine with computational thinking elements. These findings indicated that teachers are aware of AR potential to make history education more engaging, its effective implementation focused on the professional development and enhanced accessibility to AR resource. This study offers insights into how AR solution that align with curriculum goals with the aims of improving students’ motivations and encouraging a higher-order thinking skill.