AUGMENTED REALITY-ASSISTED PLC LEARNING: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT MOTIVATION

Laboratory experience is crucial in engineering education, as it enables students to design and conduct real experiments, fostering the development of their specific skills and aptitudes. However, students often face challenges when working with complex laboratory equipment, leading to longer experiment completion times. Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) offer the potential to enhance the learning experience by alleviating these difficulties. These technologies also improve concept comprehension and overall understanding of experiments. In this paper, we present an augmented reality application for a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) experiment, designed to assist students in operating laboratory equipment more easily. The study investigates the impact of AR on students' laboratory skills, learning methods, and motivation through effectiveness results. A total of 35 participants from the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering were introduced to AR technology. The study validates the effectiveness of AR using a questionnaire-based survey completed at the end of the experiment. Additionally, the study provides a comparative analysis of improvement percentages (POI) by examining data such as Task Completion Time (TCT), error counts, and the number of hints used in both paper-based and AR-based instruction experiments. Furthermore, this study assesses the understanding of MR applications. The findings suggest that AR and MR technologies are highly suitable for engineering education, offering efficiency and substantial benefits to students.