Exploring the Effects of Using an Augmented Reality-based Mobile Learning System for Design Cultural Creation Education in Taiwan: A Cross-Sectional Study (Preprint)
Authors: Cheng Ching-I 
Published: December 2022

BACKGROUND

Cultural creativity emphasizes the transformation and production of cultural perception. Cultivating talent with professional, interdisciplinary knowledge and solid cultural literacy is the focus of the development of cultural design and creative education in Taiwan. Under globalization, having cultural literacy and a full understanding of local culture makes works distinguished. The teaching-and-learning scenarios of cultural and creative education hence require the combination of formal classrooms and informal cultural fields so that students can constantly think and explore problems from experience to get close to local culture and history and then conduct keen observations through the process of discovering local cultural customs and stories. However, many local lifestyles no longer exist given changes over time, while guiding lectures in outdoor crowded spaces decreases the learning efficiency of cultural competence. Using mobile augmented reality as learning assistance might be a solution.

OBJECTIVE

Against this backdrop, this research investigates and explores the effects of using an augmented reality (hereinafter referred to as AR) mobile system in lean local culture to enhance the cultural competence of learners in cultural creative education.

METHODS

Qualitative research was embedded in the quasi-experimental based quantitative research to understand the resultant learning effect.

RESULTS

A total of 78 subjects participated in this study, of whom 37 (47.44%) had mobile AR (i.e., experimental group) to learn the local culture. This study used nonparametric statistics to verify cultural competence to understand whether using AR in local field courses to learn cultural knowledge has the same effect as hiring a "real" tour guide. This research achieved the following results. First, the analysis results of the Mann-Whitney U test showed no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. Second, from Wilcoxon’s signed rank test, according to the negative sign, there are significant differences in cultural understanding (p=.043, z=-2.019), rural cultural knowledge (p=.01, z=-3.410), rice food culture knowledge (p=.00009, z=-3.921), Song Jiang folk arts (p=.007, z=-2.702) and skill and application (p=.008, z=-2.648) between the pre- and posttest performance in the experimental group.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrated autonomous learning scenarios with LBS-AR, allowing learners to continuously seek and find information regarding local culture via field exploration and had a similar effect to attending a real live lecture. This outcome suggests that using AR as a learning tool to view and experience the local culture during field visits can enhance learners' understanding of cultural history, the degree of immersion and the accumulation of local knowledge for learners in cultural creative education. Cultural learning experiences further help to build cultural and creative industry knowledge, attitudes and practices. In this manner, students can more deeply experience the local culture and further transform what they have learned to produce professional works