Religious diversity education: raising children’s awareness of religious diversity through augmented reality

Religious diversity education has become increasingly prominent in the last few years. As the region with the second-highest religious diversity globally, Chinese Taiwan provides its students religious education early on, thus minimising misunderstandings and discrimination on the basis of religion. To diversify teaching methods, educators have adopted interactive technology as one of the primary teaching aids. This study aims to develop and evaluate the impact of an interactive technology, augmented reality (AR) in the provision of religious education. A series of experiments were conducted during the 2020 Taipei Lantern Festival of Religious Education Exhibition to explore whether using the interactive technology system significantly improved learning outcomes in comparison to traditional learning methods. To this end, a total of 50 elementary students across two experimental (n = 24) and control (n = 26) groups were recruited to participate in the study. A mixed-methods approach was used to analyse students’ subjective and objective learning outcomes. The results of the study showed that the experimental group performed significantly better in both subjective and objective learning outcomes. The findings obtained from the open-ended questions showed interactive AR technology system use positively affected the learning process. In conclusion, this study proposes that combining religious diversity education with interactive AR technology has the potential to improve students’ motivation, engage their interest, improve learning outcomes, and contribute to an increased awareness of religious diversity. It may also be helpful in limiting students’ cognitive overload during the learning process.