الفهرس 
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Abstract
The architecture design studio is considered, and will probably continue to be, the backbone of architectural education. Its most important aim is to provide students with necessary expertise and knowledge in order to produce innovative, creative and competent design by developing students’ imagination and comprehension of space.
Nowadays, Technology is changing the traditional educational methods by facilitating the interaction between the students and their environment. Virtual continuum enables new interaction levels between both real and virtual environments. It was considered as a taxonomic classification that displays different degrees of Reality-Virtuality. On one side of the continuum the real environment was placed and on the other side the virtual environment (Virtual Reality) was placed. In the middle of the continuum different degrees of integration between both the real and virtual environments was integrated including Augmented Reality and Augmented Virtuality. Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term that encompasses all the previous continuum.
Accordingly, the aim of the research is to explore the impact of using Extended Reality technologies in the design process of academic architectural design studio on enhancing students’ spatial abilities. This research consists of four chapters, upon which the primary aim may be attained by achieving the following research objectives. The objectives start by identifying XR concepts and current technologies in chapter one, followed by identifying learning theories, design process and spatial ability in chapter two. The research then reviewed and analyzed the potentials of using XR in architecture design education discussing the benefits, challenges, and previous attempts to come up with a theoretical model for integrating XR in the architectural design studio. this is finalized by testing a segment of the theoretical model in a case study to test the correlation between the use of XR in architecture design studio and the development of students’ spatial ability level. These objectives were achieved using different research methods that include data collection, data analysis, deductive analysis, and statistical analysis on the experiment pre and post assessment results. The research found through different statistical tests that using XR technology significantly increased the scores of the students in a general spatial ability test with an average of approximately 4 points compared to the students who did not use XR that had no significant increase in their test scores. The study found strong evidence that XR technologies might have a strong impact on enhancing students’ spatial abilities in the educational process for architectural design.