Classroom Augmented Reality Games: A model for the creation of immersive collaborative games in the classroom

The inclusion of technology in the classroom has increased in the recent years, with the hope of improving educational practices and results. However, the sole inclusion of this technology has not been enough to improve the education: there is a need to integrate the technology with pedagogical practices. With this purpose, we propose a technological-pedagogical model to develop educational augmented reality games using one device per student. This work presents this model, called Classroom Augmented Reality Games (CARG), and a game developed to teach electrostatic to test the model in a real classroom setting. The experimental results of a pre-post test show that the students who played the game learned while playing as much as the students who received a traditional class on the same subject. Moreover, for specific learning objectives, the use of the game improved more the results in the test than the class. The successful deployment of the technological platform in a real class and the promising educational results, show that the model presented is useful for the design of educational games in the classroom, but further tests have to be done to understand for which activities it is better suited.