Development of Design Principles for AR Authoring Tools for Education Based on Teacher's Perspectives

Augmented reality (AR) can have a positive impact on students' motivation and cognitive performance in varied age levels and different contexts. However, its use is still far from widespread in education. One of the reasons mentioned in the literature is the lack of AR authoring tools that consider the educational perspective, which means they do not usually take pedagogic aspects into account. This work investigates what characteristics are important for AR authoring in education in the form of design principles. We aimed to identify how teachers would like to create AR experiences based on their pedagogic needs through design-based research (DBR) with the participation of an interdisciplinary team to investigate and propose design principles for AR educational authoring. We followed the four steps of DBR in two cycles. We worked with multiple teachers, mostly English teachers, to understand their educational needs when authoring AR experiences. Based on that, we defined and prototyped an application focused on language learning for children and teenagers, which we evaluated in two test rounds. As a result, we proposed 11 design principles divided into three aspects: infrastructure, AR, and pedagogy. These principles were evaluated positively by teachers. To help us understand the options currently available for teachers, we analyzed the existing AR authoring tools that do not require programming to see if they meet the proposed design principles. Most of them lack important features for teachers, specifically pedagogical ones. Finally, we provided an in-depth discussion of the context and application of those principles.