Far from treating virtual and augmented reality as the latest technological lure, Valero-Franco and Berns’ article follows the trail of two teachers who decided to stop waiting for “the perfect app” and start building it with their own hands. The text does more than describe tools: it reconstructs a long trajectory, from early experiments with Moodle and virtual worlds to the decision to work with CoSpaces and ARTutor in order to create environments tailored to a very specific context: A1 German learners at the University of Cádiz.
The novelty does not lie in praising the virtues of VR and AR, but in showing what it means, in practice, for language teachers without a technical background to assume the role of developers and design immersive resources aligned with curricular demands and with students’ everyday digital habits.
The case study with 72 students serves almost as a test bench for this wager. The two apps developed (a 360º virtual tour of Cádiz and an augmented-reality guessing game) are examined through a questionnaire based on Davis’s Technology Acceptance Model, exploring ease of use, enjoyment, perceived usefulness, and intention to use.
The results are striking in a very specific way: both applications are perceived as useful for learning more, and faster; easy to handle; and clearly motivating, with no significant differences between the VR and AR experiences. The implicit message is suggestive: when pedagogical design is well-crafted, the “technological surname” (virtual or augmented) matters less than how the activity addresses the learner, places them in a recognisable environment, and compels meaningful use of the target language.
A critical reading of the work requires acknowledging its strength in an area where much of the literature falters: viability. The authors confront, without embellishment, the technical dependencies, the need for low-cost tools, and the tension between innovative enthusiasm and workload. The study, however, remains largely within the realm of perception: we learn that students like the apps and consider them useful, but we see little about their comparative impact on linguistic performance, or about how participation is redistributed among learners with different digital or linguistic backgrounds. Here lies fertile ground: crossing acceptance data with evidence of sustained use, learning trajectories, and institutional conditions.
In this sense, the article does not close a debate; it places on the table a very concrete model of the “teacher-as-developer,” one that deserves to be taken seriously in planning language education in university settings.
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How to Cite: Valero Franco, C., & Berns, A. . (2024). Development of virtual and augmented reality apps for language teaching: a case study. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 27(1), 163–185. https://doi.org/10.5944/ried.27.1.37668
