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Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) is increasingly used in education. MAR has the potential to motivate and engage learners, increase learning effects and change the quality and quantity of interaction during the learning process. Therefore, MAR learning settings (MARLS) design principles are needed to provide teachers and researchers with orientation knowledge MARLS. However, there is a lack of frameworks and principles to guide the design of effective MARLS. Design principles for MARLS should include technical and pedagogical aspects. In a literature review we analyzed 12 studies on MAR design and application for education to identify the design principles: 1. Usability; 2. User centeredness; 3. Basic learning theories; 4. Conscious application; 5. Cognitive overload. The principles may guide researchers and practitioners to bridge the gap between MAR innovations and real-world classrooms.

The core question of my cumulative dissertation is ‘how can we facilitate the development of open educational ecosystems in Switzerland?’. On the macro level, I outline stages on the way towards open educational ecosystems in Switzerland. On the meso level I identify institutional levers that might allow to facilitate the next transition to the next stage. The main focus of my dissertation project lies on the micro level. I developed a Massive Open Online Course to foster information literacy to investigate the application of the levers in practice and to find out how digital learning settings have to be designed and applied to help establish educational networks.

Bridging the gap between digital innovations developed in educational design research and the real-world classroom remains challenging. One of the main obstacles lies in institutions, e.g., fixed mindsets and timetables that prevent new developments from reaching the classrooms. A literature review of neo-institutionalist theories identified five levers to facilitate the change of institutions in education. By means of the use case of a massive open online course to foster information literacy in upper secondary education, we illustrate how the five levers may contribute to a sustainable implementation of digital learning settings in classrooms and, hence, institutional change.