The Study of AR-Based Learning for Natural Science Inquiry Activities in Taiwan’s Elementary School from the Perspective of Sustainable Development
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study presented an important topic on AR-based Learning for Natural Science Inquiry 2 Activities that would be of interest to the readership of this journal.
Very good structured article and easy to follow.
The data analysis was done meticulously and clearly presented in the forms of tables.
The study is well designed and executed.
The quality of reporting and data presentation in the paper is adequate.
In sum, I applaud all the efforts of the author(s) for this research.
I propose to add the following paper to your reference list:
Papadakis, St., & Kalogiannakis, M. (2017). Combining mobile technologies in environmental education: A Greek case study. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 11(3), 256-277. DOI: 10.1504/IJMLO.2017.1000392
I am generally very sympathetic towards the project of this paper.
Author Response
The authors are very grateful to the reviewer for their valuable comments and suggestions. We have revised our paper based on the comments very carefully, and provided detailed explanations for the review’s concerns. The substantial versions we have made to the paper should afford a considerable improvement in its contents and presentation. The revisions are summarized below as responses to the reviewer’s questions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This AR study is such a detailed piece of work it is almost too much for the ordinary reader? and the topic at hand. It is all done very thorough. My thoughts are that it would be an good teaching booklet as the authors work so methodically through each step and report on it. The aim was to develop a virtual butterfly for use with the younger children in environmental education. The technology traced the path on which the virtual butterflies had emerged.
Congratulations on this paper which is complex and detailed example on research possible in schools.
The rendering of the practical work into text needs some more thinking by the authors.
The introduction is too long and should be shortened, It takes a long time for the reader to get the information needed about the aims and objectives of the project (line 114-123) which could be introduced earlier and stated clearly and succintly. The context ..... the section on the curriculum Taiwan in 2003 established...is also a bit lengthy and repetitive.
The whole of chapter 3 could be removed and written as a separate paper WITH fewl inks with other sections.
SUGGESTION
Maybe consider calling the whole exercise a project rather than a study. Then break up the TEXT into component parts 115-123 of a project where reaching the objectives one by one is needed.
You could use the following terms to narrow down the hierarchy from the big picture to the actual moment of learning.
Hierarchy of project construction
Purpose
Goal
Aim (s)
Objective(s)
A rewrite of lines 115 - 123 might look something like this:
INTRODUCTION
This project was conducted in a primary school in a rural area of Taiwan by three …......
The purpose of the project was to use the phenomenon of augmented reality (AR) to facilitate experiential learning in line with the environmental education curriculum in Grades 1-8
The aim was to use AR in mobile learning devices that are lightweight and easy to use, supporting learning and helping teachers meet the requirements of the primary school curriculum.
Furthermore The objectives of this part of the project were to assess the ways in which the augmented reality devices are used by teachers and learners, and how and whether their use expand the effect and meaning the devices have on learning about the environment, and their attitudes towards learning about the environment.+
Literature and methodology
As in the first chapter much of the text must be cut down in the literature study. Only use information relevant to the presentation of this project.
In the findings chapter there is again a lot of detail and repetition, and some of what is laid out there is not discussed again later. It is important that the final discussion be more focused and reflective, and the changes suggested in the introduction are followed up by giving the article more of a focus and less of a broad description of developmental work.
The first section is given in great detail and again the lack of focus suffers. Who is this text being written for?
So my conclusion is major revision. It is important to note thaIreally enjoyed it but when was reading I enjoyed but then I released it was too much stuff and this and pushed me to think more clearly. There must, for example, be more compact ways to present the data and to present it in such a a way that they also tell a story. There is no interpretation and they be combined into smaller paragraphs with food captions for the diagrams.
Additional, There is one issue that is too big for one reviewer to tackle and that is the relative balance between the technical and the educational parts of the journal and the way they deal with the concept of sustainability. There was something similar in another article I reviewed not long ago.
So a few thoughts
I wonder what the readership is like in these mixed journals.
This technical and educational sections in this article from Taiwan had the same word length and both seemed too long and probably enough to frighten some people away - I more or less gave up on the technical section as there was not enough text to help me understand the quality. On the other hand the endless results in the educational part had me yawning. Here a more narrative text would have been helpful.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
A theoretically well-founded work with adequate references to the problem being addressed, which, with a series of adjustments, can be a scientifically interesting article.
The scientific protocol requires a series of conditions that must be met: the problem, the objectives, the hypotheses, the sampling, the procedure and the instruments, the results and the conclusions discussed, all are required requirements since a scientific work, which is done public, must observe the possibility of being replicated, for this reason must keep a scientific organization.
Accordingly, we propose the following considerations:
- In this work there is a lack of adequate organization to the scientific protocol.
- There is no clear determination on the type of methodology used.
- The results must be clearly expressed in terms of the hypotheses and not those of the statistical test used.
- A scientific discussion of the results and conclusions remains to be done.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The adjustments made do not increase the scientific rigor required. There is no information on the sampling and the sample of the work is very small, so that scientifically, which is always desirable, it cannot be generalized, so the work remains at the level of almost anecdote, and naturally not suitable for publication in a magazine of this level.
Likewise, and suggested in the previous review, it still does not have the requirement of discussion.
Author Response
Sustainability (Manuscript Number: sustainability-1185769)
Revisions Based on Reviewers’ Comments
The authors are very grateful to the reviewer for their valuable comments and suggestions. We have revised our paper based on the comments very carefully, and provided detailed explanations for the review’s concerns. The substantial versions we have made to the paper should afford a considerable improvement in its contents and presentation. The revisions are summarized below as responses to the reviewer’s questions.
===============================Reviewer 3=============================
Q: The adjustments made do not increase the scientific rigor required. There is no information on the sampling and the sample of the work is very small, so that scientifically, which is always desirable, it cannot be generalized, so the work remains at the level of almost anecdote, and naturally not suitable for publication in a magazine of this level.
Likewise, and suggested in the previous review, it still does not have the requirement of discussion.
Response: Many thanks to the reviewer for a lot of insightful comments and concrete suggestions. We have addressed the issues made by the reviewer, which is really helpful for us to further improve this paper. Please refer to the following responses.
- The sample of the work is the students in a primary school in a rural area of Taiwan. This is a small school with a total of only 80 students. All 80 students participated in this project. A total of 80 questionnaires were obtained, from which these 77 responses were valid. Please refer to lines 341- 347.
- Regarding the recommendations of the scientific protocol, we re-organized and rewritten these parts as suggested. The research problem and objectives are rewritten in Section 1 (Please refer to lines 68- 94). The hypotheses are proposed in Section 3(Please refer to lines 260-339). Also, the sampling, the procedure and the instruments are depicted in Section 4(Please refer to lines 340-382).
- The statistical results are discussed in three parts. First, scale validity and reliability results are shown in Section 5.2(Please refer to lines 399-427). Variance Analysis is depicted in Section 5.3(Please refer to lines 428-460). Section 5.4 shows the hypotheses model Test results (Please refer to lines 461-530). Hypotheses Results of the proposed TAM are depicted in Table 13 and Figure 8 (Please refer to lines 527-530) and the results indicate that students who PU to be higher also had a more positive attitude toward using the application. Please refer to the current version of our paper.
