The impact of augmented reality technology on students' innovation ability: Evidence from a meta-analysis

Deepening education reform and innovation, and cultivating students' innovative abilities are considered essential development directions of AR technology. However, whether AR technology can effectively improve students’ innovation abilities remains a topic of debate, as different studies have reported significant discrepancies in their findings. Therefore, this study utilises a meta-analysis method to conduct a quantitative analysis of 36 studies (quasi-experimental or experimental) with respect to ‘the impact of AR technology on students' innovative ability’ in the past 10 years. The results illustrate that: (1) AR technology exerts a moderate promotion effect on students innovative ability (the overall effect size is 0.702), and there is no significant difference in innovative thinking, innovative practice, innovative personality, etc; (2) in contrast to other educational stages, AR technology has a more positive impact on the innovative ability of children in pre-school; (3) compared with other instructional forms, integrating AR technology with practical instructional methods has a stronger promoting effect on students' innovative ability; (4) AR technology applied to group learning can improve students' innovation ability more effectively than applied to independent learning; (5) the application of AR technology in declarative knowledge teaching is more conducive to cultivating students' innovative ability than in procedural knowledge teaching; and (6) the impact degree of immediate testing and delayed testing on students' innovative ability reach a medium level, with no significant difference observed between the two testing conditions. These analyses provide important references for the future design and optimisation of innovation capability training with the aid of AR technology. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic? As one of the core competencies necessary for talent in the 21st century, innovation ability has attracted widespread attention from countries around the world. As a human-computer interaction technology that ‘seamlessly’ (smoothly) integrates real information with virtual information, AR technology can be used to create immersive learning scenarios, improve the learning experience and promote teaching innovation. Opinions diverge greatly so far on whether AR technology can significantly enhance students' innovation ability. There has remained a lack of meta-analyses synthesising the contradictory findings about the substantive impact of AR technology on students' innovation abilities. What this paper adds to the field? This study applies a meta-analysis method to analyse 36 studies (quasi-experimental or experimental) regarding the impact of AR technology on students' innovative ability published in the past 10 years. This study verifies that AR technology has a moderate degree of promoting effect on students' innovative ability, but there is no pronounced difference in its impact on innovative practice, innovative thinking and innovative personality. This study finds that there are significant differences in the development of innovative abilities supported by AR technology in different educational stages, instructional forms, learning methods, as well as knowledge types. Implications for practice and policy A flexible and effective AR teaching system and supporting ecosystem should be established to advance the deep integration of AR and education. AR-based teaching is an effective way to foster students' innovation ability. The cultivation of innovative ability based on AR technology is not universally applicable across all learning scenarios and cannot be implemented blindly. Instead, the technology should be used scientifically and reasonably according to specific educational stages, knowledge types, etc.