Augmented Reality Internet Labs versus Hands-On and Virtual Labs: A Comparative Study

A comparison between three different types of labs, namely augmented reality remote labs, virtual labs and handson is carried out. The availability of hands-on labs in engineering and science education that require costly equipment and instruments is restricted for little and limited periods of time for a huge number of students. Solutions to bypass these problems are through the introduction of augmented reality (AR) remote labs and virtual labs. AR remote lab augments the real experiment scene with virtual objects. On the contrary, a virtual lab is a software simulation, which is an imitation of a real experiment represented by a mathematical model. The paper focuses on an empirical study that compares an AR remote lab developed specially for this purpose with its corresponding hand-on and virtual labs.