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The integration of the Arduino board into educational settings has penetrated across various educational levels. The teaching of this subject can be accomplished by (a) using real components in breadboards, (b) prefabricated modular boards that snap together, and (c) utilizing computer simulations. Yet, it is unknown which interface offers a more effective learning experience. Therefore, this experimental study aims to compare the effectiveness of these interfaces in a series of three laboratory exercises involving 110 university students, who were divided into three groups: (a) the first group used a tangible user interface, implementing circuits on breadboards, (b) the second group also used a tangible interface but with modular boards, and (c) the third group used a graphical user interface to simulate circuits using Tinkercad. For each laboratory exercise, students completed both pretests and posttests. Also, they provided feedback through five Likert-type attitude questions regarding their experiences. In terms of data analysis, t-tests, ANOVA, and ANCOVA, along with bootstrapping, and principal component analysis were employed. The results suggest that among the participants, those who used a graphical user interface stated that their understanding of the interconnection of components in microcontroller circuits was enhanced, while students with previous experience in microcontroller labs found the circuit creation process easier than students without experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing Arduino development boards for learning microcontroller circuits is a prevalent practice across various educational levels. Nevertheless, the literature offers limited insights into the impact of these boards on student performance and attitudes. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the performance of 58 university students in learning microcontroller circuits with modular boards designed for Arduino through a series of 4 exercises. Specifically, students' performance is assessed through pre-tests and post-tests, in three learning units: (a) microcontroller, (b) coding, and (c) circuit. Additionally, the study captures students' attitudes and measures their perceived usability of modular boards. For this purpose, the students completed a specially designed attitude questionnaire and the system usability scale (SUS) questionnaire. Statistical analysis is conducted using t-tests, ANOVA, and ANCOVA, along with bootstrapping. The findings reveal statistically significant differences between pre-tests and post-tests in all cases. Among the three learning units, the use of modular boards appears to have the most significant impact on coding. Based on students' responses, the SUS results indicate that modular boards appear to be a quite usable approach for teaching microcontrollers. Finally, students generally express positive attitudes toward modular boards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, Augmented Reality flourishes in educational settings. Yet, little is known about teachers' and children's views of Augmented Reality applications in Preschool. This paper explores 71 preschoolers' opinions of Augmented Reality teaching integrated into a traditional learning activity. Additionally, five educators' views of Augmented Reality applications in Preschool are captured. Mixed methods with questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used. The questionnaires record children's preferences regarding their favorite learning activity between traditional and the Augmented Reality one. Additionally, they explore the activity preschoolers would like to repeat and found most enjoyable: playful. Regarding quantitative data analysis, independent/paired samples t-tests and chi-square test along with bootstrapping with 1000 samples were used. As for the qualitative data collection, educators' semi-structured interviews focused on three axes: (a) children's motivation and engagement in Augmented Reality activities, (b) Augmented Reality's potential to promote skills, and (c) Augmented Reality as a teaching tool in preschool. The emerging results are: Preschoolers prefer more Augmented Reality activities than traditional ones. There are no statistically significant gender differences in preferences for Augmented Reality activities. Educators regard Augmented Reality technology as an innovative, beneficial teaching approach in preschool. However, they express concern regarding the promotion of collaboration among preschoolers via Augmented Reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active learning, a student-centered approach, engages students in the learning process and requires them to solve problems using educational activities that enhance their learning outcomes. Augmented Reality (AR) has revolutionized the field of education by creating an intuitive environment where real and virtual objects interact, thereby facilitating the understanding of complex concepts. Consequently, this research proposes an application, called "Cooking Math", that utilizes AR to promote active learning in sixth-grade elementary school mathematics. The application comprises various educational games, each presenting a real-life problem, particularly focused on cooking recipes. To evaluate the usability of the proposed AR application, a pilot study was conducted involving three groups: (a) 65 undergraduate philosophy and education students, (b) 74 undergraduate engineering students, and (c) 35 sixth-grade elementary school students. To achieve this, (a) the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire was provided to all participants and (b) semi-structured interviews were organized to gather the participants' perspectives. The SUS results were quite satisfactory. In addition, the interviews' outcomes indicated that the elementary students displayed enthusiasm, the philosophy and education students emphasized the pedagogy value of such technology, while the engineering students suggested that further improvements were necessary to enhance the effectiveness of the learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented Reality (AR) could provide key benefits in education and create a richer user experience by increasing the motivation and engagement of the students. To this end, the current paper presents a system with three AR applications for teaching physics in the fifth and sixth grades of primary school and in the first grade of secondary school, and the ultimate goal is the development of a unified platform that covers the subject of physics in all classes of K-12 education. The platform provides a useful tool to familiarize both teachers and pupils with AR technologies, aiming to improve the learning and teaching experience and to enhance their skills. The developed system is evaluated in terms of usability, gamification and willingness of the teachers to incorporate this technology into the teaching process. A total of 314 users participated in the research, where they were divided into three user groups: (i) teachers (N = 15), (ii) pupils (N = 189) and (iii) computer science students (N = 110). The outcomes were satisfactory, revealing that the gamified AR applications are easy to use, and teachers are interested in using these AR applications in their classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

STEM education programs with educational robotics are frequently used in formal or informal education, with participants ranging from kindergarten children up to university students. The widespread implementation of these programs in schools and the growing interest of researchers in the field has led several authors/researchers to review and summarize the characteristics of STEM research. However, the literature on the features of STEM research in primary education (kindergarten and primary school) is limited. Therefore, this article is a systematic literature review that tries to enrich the STEM agenda by answering the questions: (a) which study designs are commonly used in STEM interventions, (b) what the characteristics of the sample are (number/age of the students), (c) which equipment and user interfaces (tangible/graphical) are used, and (d) what are the characteristics of the studies (duration, intervention objectives, activities) and how studies' data were recorded. For this review, 36 out of 337 articles were analyzed and emerged from eight databases, three search-keywords and six exclusion criteria. The examination of the reviewed articles showed, inter alia, that non-experimental design is usually used, that in half of the cases written evaluations are used and the sample size is almost equal between girls and boys. Finally, long-term research is restricted, therefore it is not safe to generalize the findings of these studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The augmented reality game-based learning (ARGBL) approach is an advantageous pathway for the development and enhancement of teaching and learning processes. To this end, this paper presents the design and development of an ARGBL application for the implementation of physics experiments in the fifth grade of a Greek primary school. The purpose of the ARGBL system is twofold: to educate and entertain. For this reason, a treasure hunt game was implemented, which allows students to interact with a digital world and to manipulate virtual objects with the use of an augmented reality (AR) device. Then, according to the instructions, students have to collect all the materials to conduct the AR educational experiment. Overall, the evaluation of the system's usability by 17 users (both students and teachers) was very promising, indicating that the ARGBL application has the potential to be an easy-to-use educational tool for improving not only the teaching of physics experiments in primary school but also the learning process, by positively affecting the students' motivation and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational robotics (ER) seems to have a positive effect on students and, in many cases, might help them to successfully assimilate knowledge and skills. Thus, this paper focuses on ER and carries out a literature review on educational robotics simulators with Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). The review searches for relevant papers which were published in the period 2013–2020 and extracted the characteristics of the simulators used. The simulators that we describe in this article cover various robotic technologies, offering students an easy way to engage with virtual robots and robotics mechanisms, such as wheeled robots or drones. Using these simulators, students might cover their educational needs or prepare themselves for educational robotic competitions by working in as realistic as possible conditions without hardware restrictions. In many cases, simulators might reduce the required cost to obtain a robotic system and increase availability. Focusing on educational robotics simulators, this paper presents seventeen simulators emphasizing key features such as: user's age, robot's type and programming language, development platform, capabilities, and scope of the simulator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]