Smart mechanisms and their influence on geometry learning of elementary school students in authentic contexts

With facilitation of advanced technologies, design and application of smart become promising research issues in education. Although it is potential for students to learn geometric in authentic contexts, there were still lack of studies addressing smart learning issue in authentic context for geometry. This study aim to propose an app, called SmartUG, to support students smartly to consolidate geometry understanding and learning through enriching experience of exploring and applying related geometry surrounding. There were four smart mechanisms proposed in SmartUG (direction guidance, learning progress, object recognition and answer feedback) to guide students' measuring and applying geometry smartly and meaningfully in authentic contexts. A total of 83 fifth‐grade students participated in this experiment and were divided into three groups, an experimental group that learned with smart mechanisms, a control group that learned without smart mechanisms and a traditional control group that learning with traditional teaching approach. Basically, experimental group outperformed control group and traditional teaching group in term of geometry ability and estimation ability, which means students benefited from proposed SmartUG. Moreover, students showed positive attitude and high intention to use toward SmartUG. Students should be provided more chances to learn geometry smartly in authentic contexts with SmartUG. It is potential to future studies to implement more smart mechanisms to support students learning in authentic contexts. Moreover, the learning system can get smarter and smarter when the learning system gets more and more input data from students' use. Lay Description What is already known about this topic Geometry is important and strongly related to our surroundings. Students have few chances to learn Geometry through practicing in authentic contexts. Innovative technologies are potential to be utilized to facilitate smart learning. What this paper adds Proposed a framework of smart mechanisms to support learning Geometry in authentic context. Utilized innovative technologies to facilitate smart learning in authentic context. Implications for practice and/or policy Smart learning in authentic context helped improving students' motivation and achievements. The proposed smart mechanisms are effective to support smart learning. The smart mechanisms can be implemented not only for Geometry but also other subjects.