The Introduction of Augmented Reality in STREAM Education Impacts Science Students' State Emotions

It was recently shown that the introduction of video art in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) education alleviates negative academic emotion and also creates a positive learning experience for university science students. Furthermore, students' writing apprehension levels towards technical writing may be manipulated via pre-writing techniques and strategies, such as free-writing. Notably, it has been maintained that the English for Academic/English for Scientific Purposes (EAP/EScP) courses can provide fruitful grounds for the investigation of the class-related state emotion. In the present study, we devised a pre-technical writing teaching intervention that involved a STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading/Writing, Engineering, Art, Math) lesson plan. This comprised of William Blake's poetry presented in the context of his illuminated books of Songs of Innocence and Experience, with an emphasis on the analysis of his poem, the Tyger. Subsequently, students engaged with an Augmented Reality (AR) art book and created their own AR artwork. Students were requested to record their emotions and attitudes on the art and technology involved. Also, they were asked to produce a written piece on their views on the visual languages and realities that they experienced. The assessment of academic emotion occurred prior-and post-teaching, followed by the experience evaluation of the intervention. Results denote a positive experience, a partial increase in positive emotion and a generalized drop of intense negative academic emotion, and are thus in line with recent studies in the field.