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The Effects of VR Environments on the Acceptance, Experience, and Expectations of Cultural Heritage Learning

Published: 05 February 2020 Publication History

Abstract

This article attempts to understand how present Virtual Reality (VR) environments can contribute to enhancing the communication of cultural heritage by providing an experience of the past that is acceptable for the younger generation and how museums and cultural institutions should adopt and use such technologies. Aspects of acceptance, experience, and expectation of VR with the underlying values are not well understood but are important for the sustainability of the communication of cultural heritage as a bequest to future generations. We conducted a combined quantitative--qualitative study on the participants who have various prior experience with gaming and VR, and different levels of knowledge on the history presented within the virtual environment. This study investigates how participants accept and are stimulated in terms of personal experience and their expectations and ideas for the future of museums if VR is used for enhancing the learning of cultural heritage. Prior gaming and VR experience were investigated to see whether they do indeed influence the preference for using VR for learning cultural heritage. We demonstrated that particular age groups and background are especially agreeable to virtual reality as environments for learning and experiencing cultural heritage, regardless of their knowledge of the historical context of the virtually reconstructed site. Our findings also revealed important behaviours in our demographics group with regards to user preferred length of time and the believability of the virtual environment and how it influences aspects of their experience such as the exploration of the heritage site, familiarity, and meaning making. The study has implications for the use of VR for enhancing the experience of cultural heritage in museums and cultural institutions.

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  1. The Effects of VR Environments on the Acceptance, Experience, and Expectations of Cultural Heritage Learning

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      cover image Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
      Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage   Volume 13, Issue 1
      February 2020
      143 pages
      ISSN:1556-4673
      EISSN:1556-4711
      DOI:10.1145/3382043
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Association for Computing Machinery

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      Publication History

      Published: 05 February 2020
      Accepted: 01 July 2019
      Revised: 01 April 2019
      Received: 01 October 2018
      Published in JOCCH Volume 13, Issue 1

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      Author Tags

      1. Digital heritage
      2. digital technology
      3. technology acceptance
      4. virtual heritage
      5. virtual reality

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      • Research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed

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      • Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau, and the International Doctoral Innovation Centre (IDIC)
      • Science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province
      • IAMET

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      • (2024)MagicMap: Enhancing Indoor Navigation Experience in VR Museums2024 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR58804.2024.00107(881-891)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2024
      • (2024)Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage: Opportunities and ChallengesIEEE Transactions on Technology and Society10.1109/TTS.2024.34324075:3(293-305)Online publication date: Sep-2024
      • (2024)Enhancing the Motivation of Young Learners in Intangible Cultural Heritage Education: A Creative Real-Time Finger Tracking System for Chinese Shadow Puppetry2024 12th International Conference on Information and Education Technology (ICIET)10.1109/ICIET60671.2024.10542819(154-158)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
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      • (2024)Thirteen Hongs of Canton: An Immersive Virtual Reality Game for Exploration of Cultural HeritageVirtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality10.1007/978-3-031-61047-9_13(204-213)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
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