Teachers as Augmented Reality Designers: A Study on Italian as a Foreign Language – Teacher Perceptions

Introduction

AR enables the integration of digital layers like animations, pictures, videos or audios into the real world (Azuma, 1997). Users can interact with enhanced virtual contents by pointing their mobile device camera to an object, to a Quick Response (QR) code or to a specific place. Differently from Virtual Reality (VR) where the user is totally immersed in a digital environment, AR enables the possibility to interact with virtual contents while being immersed in the real world (Milgram & Kishino, 1994; Pegrum, 2021). Because of the possibility to be implemented by mobile devices like smartphones or tablets, it has been easy for AR to enter the world of education. Formal classroom teaching is being increasingly supported by mobile technologies (Kukulska-Hulme & Morgana, 2021; Sun & Gao, 2020) and when it is implemented for foreign language education, AR “falls into the scope of MALL [Mobile Assisted Language Learning]” (Zhang et al., 2020, p. 218).

Even though AR is demonstrating a number of advantages for language learning, a main gap referring to the role of teachers as AR content creators still needs to be addressed (MacCallum & Parsons, 2019). The majority of educators do not possess the knowledge required to design AR content materials (Parmaxi & Demetriou, 2020). Moreover, they are not equipped with the expertise to deal with possible issues that could arise during mobile AR (MAR) classroom implementation (Zhang et al., 2020; Khoshnevisan & Le, 2019). Therefore, studies on teacher perceptions when engaged in designing and implementing MAR activities for the language classroom are necessary, since the role of educators is crucial to support a successful integration of AR in the classroom (Bonner & Reinders, 2018; Lee, 2020). By considering teacher perceptions during the experience of “taking upon the dual role of a language teacher and AR technology designer” (Zhang et al., 2020, p. 230), it will be possible to identify teacher and student needs and, eventually, to develop a set of best practices in order to successfully implement this emergent technology and promote foreign language learning. Regarding the target languages, English and Chinese are the most explored (Parmaxi & Demetriou, 2020) and the implementation of MAR for the teaching of Italian as a Foreign Language (IFL) is limited.

Against these backdrops, the researcher implemented an Action Research study, focussing on a small group of IFL teachers in an Argentinian bilingual Spanish-Italian school. The investigation aimed to describe the experience of educators while collaborating with them in the process of designing and implementing MAR activities through the open-source tool Metaverse, in a context where technological and infrastructural resources can be limited. In line with other researches (Chen et al., 2020; Taşkıran, 2019), the analysis showed that according to teacher perceptions MAR has the potential to positively affect the overall teaching and learning process. However, long-term ongoing technical training for teacher is needed. Moreover, results underscored a need for open-source, code free MAR platforms designed for language teachers, as well as a necessity for educators to access online MAR learning resources in languages other than English. Finally, the study highlights the need to enable teachers to customize this emergent technology for their classrooms, avoiding the situation where MAR design is managed by information technology specialists with limited knowledge of effective pedagogies (Bower et al., 2014). Therefore, before implementing MAR on a large-scale, it is necessary to empower teachers, generating democratic access to MAR open-source tools and to learning resources free of economic and linguistic barriers.