Laboratory courses are an important aspect in studying chemistry as they provide students with hands-on skills of observation and analysis. In particular, benchtop batch distillation is one of the compulsory experiments in the first-year chemistry laboratory course, which despite its simple operation, many first-year chemistry students are found to be unfamiliar with the assembly of the setup due to the limited extent of laboratory training they received in their previous education. To address this gap, a 3D application that includes an augmented reality is developed to aid the learning process of the students. The focus of the research is to seek better understanding on how students will benefit from the application. It also aims to develop a better learning platform to complement the students’ learning process in laboratory distillation. The 3D application has been developed by using Unity, a free popular platform for augmented and virtual reality development. The 3D application is fitted with multiple modules consisting of educational safety video, introduction of the distillation apparatus setup, and self-evaluation section where students are given tasks to assemble the distillation experimental setup. Pre-test and post-test are used to determine the effectiveness of the application in facilitating the students learning. The preliminary data shows that the number of correct answers in the post-<br/>test is higher than those in the pre-test, which suggests that the 3D application helps improve the understanding of the students in setting up benchtop distillation experiment.

Development and implementation of augmented reality application for chemistry laboratory experiment

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