Augmented Reality’s Impact on Student Creativity in Design and Technology: An Immersive Learning Study

This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of Augmented Reality (AR)-enhanced instruction on creativity development in Malaysian Design and Technology education. Forty-six, fifteen-year-old female students were assigned to AR-enhanced (n = 23) or traditional instruction (n = 23) groups for a four-week Mechatronic Design unit. Creativity was assessed using an adapted Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) instrument with expert validation and independent scoring by three raters. Bootstrapped ANCOVA (5000 iterations) controlling for pretest differences revealed significant improvements across all Guilford creativity components in the AR group: Elaboration (F = 27.093, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.387), Originality (F = 20.445, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.322), Fluency (F = 17.896, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.294), and Flexibility (F = 7.593, p = 0.008, η2 = 0.150). The differential effect pattern suggests AR operates through multiple mechanisms, primarily socio-constructivist collaborative scaffolding, followed by motivational enhancement and cognitive load reduction. These findings demonstrate AR’s substantial potential for creativity development in Design and Technology education, particularly for collaborative elaboration and generative ideation. However, single gender sampling, brief intervention duration, and quasi-experimental design limit generalizability, warranting future research with diverse populations and extended interventions.