Improving Spatial Perspective Taking Ability of Middle School Students Using Augmented Reality

There is great interest in understanding the pedagogical value of Augmented Reality (AR) based systems. Here, we measured the effect of an AR tool - GeoSolvAR - on spatial perspective-taking ability of students. The GeoSolvAR application helps learners to visualize 2D images as 3-D objects. In this pilot study, we report data from 16 middle school students who were individually administered the online Perspective Taking Spatial Orientation Test (PTSOT) both prior to and after performing the GeoSolvAR activities. Our results suggest that the students showed a significant decrease in angular errors on PTSOT in the post-test with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.26). A cohort-level analysis also revealed larger and equal effect sizes in perspective-taking spatial abilities for both males and females (Cohen’s d = 0.69). However, our finding with a subset of 10 students reveal that the GeoSolvAR activities were challenging for the students and that there was a positive but non-significant correlation of students’ GeoSolvAR activity with their PTSOT performance. We discuss the limitations, and the way forward for this work, while making a case for using the GeoSolvAR application as a spatial-skill training tool.