H. Badioze Zaman et al. (Eds.): IVIC 2013, LNCS 8237, pp. 516–525, 2013. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013 Application of Mobile Augmented Reality in a Computer Science Course Nazatul Aini Abd. Majid Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM),43600 Selangor, Malaysia nazatul@ftsm.ukm.my Abstract. Engaging learning environment for learning complex materials in higher education is difficult to perform because the contents are mostly theoretical and hard to visualize. This problem motivates the use of mobile augmented reality in this research. The objective of this research is to design and develop a mobile augmented reality application that can enhance the student’s perception of the selected materials in computer organization and operating system course. The application was developed using three levels of knowledge (understand, apply, analyze) and involved the integration of video, audio, graphic and text information. The evaluation of the application using responses from 13 second year university students shows that this application can be used to enhance the students understanding and engage them in a group discussion for solving the given exercises. This application is expected to be a good start for learning complex materials in the selected course and can be extended to cover different levels of knowledge and subjects. Keywords: mobile augmented reality, higher education, computer science. 1 Introduction One of the most important content in computer organization and operating system course is Central Processing Unit (CPU), where CPU controls the operation of the computer and performs its data processing function; often simply referred to as processor [1]. The complexity of CPU presents great challenges to teach this component to the university students. A set of integrated educational simulators supporting teaching and learning of computer architecture has been developed and used to engage students to modern computer system architecture including CPU [2]. A new technology, augmented reality (AR), that has gained a growing interest from education industry, is a potential technique that can be used as an additional tool for engaging students in learning this complex material. This is because one of the benefits of AR is that it can enhance a user’s perception of the real world with virtual objects [3]. AR can be used to improve the explanation of a complex concept by overlaying related information on the real object. Since the hand-held devices such as tablet, mobile phone can be used as a tool to view the information overlay, mobile AR has gained increased attention from academia and industry because the portability of