Exploring the Acceptance of Augmented Reality-Based Educational Games: A Systematic Review

Introduction

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) has advanced the integration of augmented reality (AR) and educational games (Lee et al., 2018). AR integrates virtual objects into reality, thus enabling learners to interact with virtual objects in a real environment (Azuma, 1997; Sood, 2012). AR provides an immersive experience and authentic sense. AR has been recognized as an effective learning tool (Georgiou & Kyza, 2017; Urbano et al., 2020). Educational games exert a positive influence on learners’ retention of knowledge, language skills, and learning experience (Serra & Gilabert, 2021; Wouters et al., 2013). Therefore, the combination of AR with educational games could create a fun, highly immersive, authentic, and motivating learning environment to improve student learning attitudes and performances (Hwang et al., 2016).

A growing body of evidence from empirical studies has suggested the importance of the acceptance level of educational technologies. Specifically, the acceptance level of educational technologies may play a key role in students’ learning. A high acceptance level of educational technologies could boost learning motivation (Zuo et al., 2022), learning engagement (Kala & Chaubey, 2022), and learning satisfaction (Han & Sa, 2021). Moreover, the acceptance of educational technologies is important in course design. The investigation of the acceptance of a specific educational technology could provide implications for course design. Recognizing that students accept a specific education technology, researcher and teachers are encouraged to put the educational technology into their course design. It may develop the quality of course design (Armstrong, 2011). On the other hand, understanding influencing factors in the acceptance of a specific educational technology could help teachers and researchers to add mechanisms in courses to motivate more students (Park, 2009).

Recent developments in AR-based educational games have led to a surge of interest in the acceptance of AR-based educational games. Previous studies demonstrated an important role of AR-based educational game acceptance in the learning process (see, e.g., Hou & Keng, 2021). AR-based educational games are one of the promising educational technologies. AR-based educational games could exert a positive effect on students’ learning, possibly because of learners’ high acceptance level of using AR-based educational games (Wen, 2020). Moreover, assessing students’ acceptance of AR-based educational games is an essential step before educators adopted AR-based educational games into course design and designers could further develop AR-based educational games. Still, there is a need to investigate the acceptance of AR-based educational games.

Although several studies have been published on AR-based educational game acceptance, there is a lack of a systematic review to provide a comprehensive insight into the acceptance of AR-based educational games since 2019. This study aims to review studies reporting the acceptance of AR-based educational games from 2019 to 2022. More precisely, this study aims to have a comprehensive understanding of AR-based educational game acceptance by analyzing research methods, acceptance models, and factors influencing AR-based educational game acceptance. This study could provide educators and game designers with a clear vision of factors that may influence the extent to which learners accept AR-based educational games.