RÉSUMÉ Il est couramment affirmé que la Réalité Augmentée (RA) ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour la formation. Aujourd’hui, on constate que peu de données objectives viennent étayer les hypothèses concernant l’efficacité et l’utilisabilité de cette technologie. Cet article présente une revue de certains résultats empiriques actuels sur l’ergonomie de la RA pour l’apprentissage. Les conclusions sur l’efficacité de la technologie pour la formation ne sont pas tranchées. Actuellement, la RA se révèle efficace pour la présentation d’un feed-back sur l’avancement d’une tâche, réalisée en parallèle avec d’autres tâches, ou pour l’assistance au rappel. Nous avançons l’idée que le nombre limité de résultats empiriques concluants est en partie dû à l’absence d’une approche centrée sur l’utilisateur et l’apprentissage tout au long du processus de conception et d’évaluation des systèmes de RA. En conclusion, nous soulignons l’importance d’une telle orientation.
ERGONOMICS OF AUGMENTED REALITY FOR LEARNING : A REVIEW It is claimed that emerging technologies, in particular Augmented Reality (AR), offer new perspectives for training and learning. Nevertheless, actual empirical results do not consistently report a benefit of using AR applications for training. This article presents a literature review of the ergonomics of AR for learning and training. On the basis of some current empirical results, we discuss the advantages, the real contributions and the problems of this technology in educational and training settings. The first part of the paper briefly presents the concept of AR and the potential of this technology to assist learning. The second part presents a discussion on the dominant orientation of current research in the field of AR, which is essentially technology-driven. In the third part of the paper, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of another approach to AR, which we identified in the literature, that is to say the user-centered approach. Within this framework, AR is considered and evaluated as a learning resource and as an aid to learners’ and tutors’ activities. In this case, the crucial research questions concern the learning and training objectives implemented within current AR prototypes, the target end-users’ profiles, the pedagogical configurations actually available, and the sensory modalities through which users conduct dialogue. The fourth part of the paper presents a number of current empirical results on the ergonomics of AR systems used for training and education. Broadly speaking, empirical results on the ergonomics of AR systems for learning fall into two categories : empirical data on the usability of the applications, and studies that try to evaluate the effectiveness of AR as a training aid (i.e. its effectiveness for comprehension, retention, transfer, etc.). There is no clear evidence demonstrating the utility of AR for learning. Nevertheless, AR seems useful for assisting divided attention in multiple tasks, as well as for assisting the recall of information. We suggest that the limited number of conclusive results on the utility of AR for learning is partly due to the lack of user-centered and learner-centered design and evaluations of AR systems. In conclusion, we emphasize the importance of such an orientation and discuss some relationships between usability and learnability.
