A Study of Learning in a Virtual Museum Setting
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Hsu, Kai-Lin
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Virtual Museums, like physical museums, should be developed to fulfill the missions such as educational activity, exhibition, recreation and research. However, most of the studies in virtual museums merely focus on topics such as technique, user interface and educational support services, only a few studies concentrate on users’ experience in virtual environment. The purpose of this study is to research the following issues: 1) How do users learn from the virtual museum? 2) How efficiently is the virtual museum learning? What’s the relationship between physical and virtual museum? 3) How users view the role of the virtual museum in their museum experience?
Fifteen participants who visited the physical National Palace Museum in past six months were interviewed in this study. Their browsing behavior on the website of National Palace Museum were observed and recorded. Follow-up interviews were conducted to verify and understand their thoughts about this experience. Finally, data were analyzed according to their characteristics.
The results of this research indicate that 1) Users’ learning experiences in the virtual museum is similar to those in the physical museum. Their activities can be classified into nine indicative behaviors. 2) Users can gain informal learning outcomes from the virtual museum and their experience varied by their personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts. Also, the experience of virtual museum visiting was different from that of physical museum visiting. These differences reflect the advantages and limits of the two experiences and the collaborative potential. 3) In users’ opinions, the most important function of virtual museums is to support their physical museum experiences such as planning a visit to the museum and following-up on a recent visit to a museum visit.
This study suggests that 1) Virtual museums should provide information contents based on users’ requirements and therefore satisfy users’ needs 2) The design of virtual museums has to focus on the usability and enhance the information flow from virtual museums to users. 3) The museum staff needs to create a virtuous circle between a museum’s online and physical spaces.
Subjects
虛擬博物館
博物館經驗
博物館學習
使用者研究
Virtual museum
Museum experience
Museum learning
User study
Type
thesis
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