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Evaluating user experience in joint activities between schools and museums in virtual worlds

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Abstract

The use of virtual worlds in the school is an extraordinary tool to engage the children in the process of e-learning. Although one can find many examples that describe the use of such a technology in teaching regular educational contents, very few examples replicate other classical outdoor educational activities such as a visit to a museum, including the remote interaction with the docents of the visited institution. In this work, the results of a study of the user experience of three groups of children within a flexible virtual space that connects schools and museums are described and evaluated. This integrated educational space not only includes the exploration of exhibition areas but also the telepresence talks on the part of museum personnel, simulations, educational work in the form of virtual quests, all within a multi-user virtual environment based on OpenSim and simultaneously accessible from the different institutions involved in the experiment. The results obtained could serve as a starting point for a future implementation of this platform for connecting educational institutions and museums across an entire city.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. videaLAB – University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña s/n, 15071, A Coruña, Spain

    Viviana Barneche Naya & Luis Antonio Hernández Ibáñez

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  1. Viviana Barneche Naya
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  2. Luis Antonio Hernández Ibáñez
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Correspondence to Luis Antonio Hernández Ibáñez.

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Barneche Naya, V., Hernández Ibáñez, L.A. Evaluating user experience in joint activities between schools and museums in virtual worlds. Univ Access Inf Soc 14, 389–398 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0367-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0367-y

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