TEACHER PERCEPTIONS ON IMPLEMENTING MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY FOR THE TEACHING OF ITALIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. A PILOT STUDY

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emergent technology that is revolutionizing the educational environment. Despite the plethora of advantages that AR has demonstrated in a number of disciplines, its implementation for foreign language education is still limited. Moreover, the majority of teachers are unfamiliar with this emergent technology and their role as AR designers and facilitators is still a critical factor. On the other hand, the most explored target languages are English and Chinese and although new languages are being investigated, the study of AR for the Teaching of Italian as a Foreign Language (TIFL) is limited. Therefore, the investigation aimed to highlight the perspective of educators when engaged in the process of designing and implementing Mobile AR (MAR) for the language classroom. In line with other researches, the pilot study showed that according to teachers’ perceptions, AR has the potential to enhance student motivation. However, initial findings highlighted the need of long-term, ongoing training for teachers and the necessity for open-source, code free, mobile AR platforms specifically designed for language educators. Becoming equipped with skills and tools to integrate AR in the language classroom, teachers can customize this emergent technology, avoiding the situation where AR learning design is mainly managed by information technologists, that ignore students’ needs and have a limited understanding of effective pedagogies.