Abstract:

Higher education institutions rely on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance the educational environments. Their reliance on it has increased due to the current global issue of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, higher education has tried to adopt some educational technology tools to support students remotely.
However, the success of adopting e-initiatives such as Augmented Reality (AR) as pedagogical tools, particularly in a crisis of pandemic situation based on academic staff's awareness of it.

This mixed-methods study aims to investigate the perceptions and perspectives and experiences of academic staff in five public Saudi universities about the potential benefits, potential barriers and potential factors that can motivate academic staff to adopt AR in teaching and learning practice. Moreover, the study also seeks to determine whether there are statistically significant differences between academic staff’s perceptions and their universities, faculties, and their gender. Further, the relationship between academic staff perspective and their actual use and intention to use AR in future is addressed. The study results reveal that academic staff were aware of AR used as a pedagogical tool and most of them did not use it, but most of them are planning to use it in future. Also, the study results show that academic staff agree with most of the AR benefits in teaching and learning. However, most of them faced or/and will some barriers that might limit the use of AR technologies in their teaching. The study also found that crisis responses, hedonic motivation, and attitude factors are the most important factors that can motivate academic staff to adopt AR in teaching and learning practice. The study also showed statistically significant differences in academic staff perceptions and their universities, faculties, and gender. There were also statistically significant differences in academic staff perspective of the potential benefits of using AR as a pedagogical and their colleges of affiliation. The results also indicated that there were statistically significant differences in academic staff perspectives of the barriers to adopting AR technology and their gender. The study concluded that there was a relationship between academic staff perspective and their actual use and intention to use it in future.

The main contribution of this study is to provide recommendations based on the study result to support universities in Saudi Arabia before implicating AR technology in their educational environment. It is unprecedented to study the necessity of using AR technologies in a time of Covid-19. Therefore, the contribution is twofold theoretical and practical.

Keywords:

Higher education, Academic Staff, AR Technology as pedological tools, Teaching and Learning Practice, Benefits of AR, Barriers to adopting AR, Motivating Factors to adopt AR.