Work-In-Progress—Developing Materials Science Experiments Using Augmented Reality: How Much Reality is Needed?

This work-in-progress paper presents two Augmented Reality applications for teaching fractography. The first application has little connection with reality, whereas the second application has a strong anchoring and dependency with reality: students need to have prepared physical lab samples to trigger the display of virtual elements on their phone. Student feedback reveals a tension with the teacher’s view on how much reality is needed. Where the teacher sees the use of physical samples to assess laboratory skills, many students view Augmented Reality as a learning complement on the theoretical rather than the experimental aspects of fractography.