3D Online Virtual Museum as e-Learning Tool

A Mixed Reality Experience

Dragoş Gheorghiu

and Livia Ştefan

Doctoral School, National University of Arts, 19 Budişteanu Str., Bucharest, Romania

Department of Computing Applications, Institute for Computers, Calea Floreasca 167, Bucharest, Romania

Keywords: 3D Virtual Museum, e-Learning, Virtual Reality, Mixed-Reality.

Abstract: The paper discusses the use of 3D online virtual museums as educational instruments for children in

economically disadvantaged communities. It discusses the advantages of simulation and immersion as

learning enhancements, compared to traditional learning methods, using a case study based on the currently

on-going work of development of a virtual museum (www.timemaps.net/timemap/?page_id=6). Presenting

chronologically layered information, the museum offers a series of e-learning modules teaching traditional

crafts technologies. The current audience is represented by children from a Romanian village community.

The paper covers a description of the methodology used, as well as an evaluation of the usefulness of the

solution by the target audience. In conclusion, the paper outlines a strategy for further development of the

proposed e-learning solution.

1 INTRODUCTION

Distance-learning (Aldrich, 2009:48) has become a

method of choice, using virtual environments in

order to provide accessible education in

underprivileged environments. We have used it as a

solution to facilitate the access to education in

remote and economically disadvantaged

communities, by initiating an educational project –

“The Maps of Time - Real communities-Virtual

Worlds-Experimented Pasts” (Grant PN II IDEI),

linking these communities to the research centres

and urban education institutes, such as the National

University of Arts Bucharest (NUA).

The paper presents one of the educational

experiments within this research project, conducted

by Professor Dragoş Gheorghiu in Vădastra village,

Oltenia County, in southern Romania. Participation

in the experiment has included specialists and

teachers from our university, as well as teachers and

children from three secondary schools. The

experiment consisted in the implementation of a 3D

virtual museum comprising 3 archaeological levels,

with realistic reconstructions of ancient objects and

using Mixed Reality (Milgram and Kishno, 1994) to

augment the 3D virtual environment with video

films. The educational content (3D reconstructions

and the professional video films), was developed by

masters’ program students and artists from our

university, under the supervision of Professor

Dragoş Gheorghiu.

The objective was to create e-learning solutions

supporting the teaching of traditional technologies in

an intuitive, engaging, play-immersive manner,

leading to the enhancement of the traditional,

curriculum-based learning, through the use of

innovative and cost-effective ICT technologies, and

learning by doing (Dewey, 1938; Schank, 1995).

Finally, the experiment aimed at the creation of a

learning community. The paper presents the details

of the learning experiment as a case study, in

relation with other experiments that were performed

in similar international and national projects,

followed by an evaluation of the learning outcome.

The conclusions of the experiments are presented,

Figure 1: The entrance in the virtual museum.

379

Gheorghiu D. and ¸Stefan L..

3D Online Virtual Museum as e-Learning Tool - A Mixed Reality Experience.

DOI: 10.5220/0004839003790388

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 379-388

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

validating the use of the 3D virtual museums as

modern and effective learning instruments. The

paper closes with an outline of the future

development strategy.

2 THE IMPORTANCE OF

MUSEUMS FOR EDUCATION

The limitations of traditional learning methods have

been addressed in several papers. Relan and Gillani

(1997) characterize formation using the traditional

educational settlements as follows: a) Spatial and

temporary structures, in which learners should adapt;

b) Learning geographically limited to classrooms,

laboratories, etc. and disciplines are taught at

predetermined times and in a pre-established order;

c) The physical presence of student and teacher in

the same classroom is an indispensable requirement,

so that learning can occur (see also Campas, 2008).

2.1 Traditional Museums

As early as the 19

century the museums started to

be reconsidered for a systematic use as educational

instruments. These “were placed on the front line in

the educational agendas of the period. This was

evident in the increasingly close connections

between museums and the development of

compulsory public schooling, and in the stress that

was placed on the value of museums as instruments

of adult education” (Bennet, 2004).

On the other hand, the educational results to be

achieved from visiting traditional real-life museums

have their limitations, due to: a) relatively

conventional presentation methods; b) limited

accessibility (in time and space); c) limited visiting

time; d) static, non-interactive visits, often without a

guide to provide explanations.

2.2 Modern Museums

As Germain Bazin anticipated long time ago, we live

now in “The Museum Age” (de Leeuw 1999: 79). In

the 21

century the modern museums improved the

users’ experience through the introduction of

interactivity, and of the online versions of the

institutions. Beside modern ICT technologies,

today’s museums promote:

 a new way to look at the past (Wheat-Stranahan

et al., 2007);

 online multimedia content; The European Virtual

Museum, implements a dynamic web site based

on “user-friendly interactive databases”, stating

that a “System of Management for interactive

databases (RDBMS) is crucial in order to create

a virtual museum”;

 an immersive experience using Virtual Reality

applications and 3D modelling in online museum

environments (Hermon, 2008).

2.3 The Advantages of Virtual

Museums

Several advantages can be derived from creating and

visiting virtual museums:

 unrestricted accessibility regardless of time and

location;

 the capacity to display ancient monuments and

objects in their complete form;

 (virtual) access to otherwise (physically)

inaccessible places in a monument;

 the capacity to interact with the museum’s

objects;

 the capacity to enable virtual tourism (Maiorescu

and Sabou, 2013; El Hakim et al., 2004);

 the capacity to use simulation and recreation as

educational tools (Politis and Marras, 2008);

 the capacity to access complex museum

presentations as reconstructed objects alone, or

in their historical contexts, as well as objects

augmented with explanations;

 an educational exploration at reduced cost,

requiring only a good Internet connection;

 interactive communication of cultural heritage in

public spaces (Trapp et al., 2012).

2.4 The Advantages of Learning

in Online 3D Virtual Environments

The advantages of learning in 3D virtual

environments, as a form of distance education

(Annetta et al., 2010), have been outlined by several

theoretical papers. Winn (2002) states that one

important ability of 3D virtual environments is

reification, by which objects that are not accessible

to the human senses are transformed into “visible,

audible and tangible objects” (Gell-Mann, 1994).

Another characteristic of 3D virtual

environments is user’s immersion in the virtual

space, which creates a feeling of presence and

stimulates the learning outcomes (Winn, 1995; see

also Dickey, 2003; Dede, 2009). The immersion in

an artificial environment can help learners to better

understand the tri-dimensional dynamic processes

(Winn, 1995), facilitates both the verbal and non-

verbal communication and collaboration (Kappe and

Gütl, 2009) or other “important life skills” (Annetta

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et al., 2010).

The physical presence has a strong cognitive

function, leading to a higher level of involvement of

the learners in the learning process. This implication

is considered more important for the “conceptual

modification than the cerebral activity, typically

necessary for problem solving based learning”

(Clark, 1999).

A virtual world can enhance an experiential

learning process through activities such as

simulation and role-play. It also “promotes

immersive learning as the learner can potentially

experience the emotions and thoughts of someone in

a simulated situation” (Macedo and Morgado, 2009).

These environments also support the self-paced

learning style, i.e., the possibility for the student to

resume or repeat the learning process.

For human sciences, 3D environments can have a

stronger cognitive impact, as they give learners the

feeling of being in the simulated reality, thus

improving the understanding and memorization of

the information. Possessing an important spatial

component, the 3D virtual environments allow users

to freely change the visualization perspective.

Finally, not the least important aspect, 3D virtual

environments allow the simulation of virtual time

travel.

3 THE MIXED REALITY

PARADIGM

According to the definition of Milgram and Kishino

(1994) Mixed Reality (MR) is a “subclass of VR

related technologies that involve merging of real and

virtual worlds”.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology, which

allows an enhancement of the reality using virtual

information (Azuma et al., 2001). When a virtual

environment is augmented with content from the real

world, the process is called Augmented Virtuality

(AV). Milgram and Kishino (1994) proposed an

integration of the two technologies, called Mixed

Reality.

The augmentations enhance the learning

outcome since “the AR/MR systems allow the

augmentation of the user’s perception of the real

world, but also the use of existent visual and spatial

abilities and an enhancement of the interaction

capacities of the users” (Holza et al., 2011). This is

why the AR systems have to “give their users the

illusion that digital objects are in the same space as

physical ones” (Costanza et al., 2009), and therefore

“the digital objects need to be precisely positioned

into the real environment and aligned with the real

objects in real time” (Azuma et al., 2001). When the

augmentation is applied to virtual environments this

requirement is not imperative.

4 SIMILAR WORK

There are currently several projects which address

the presentation of the virtual heritage: “Museums

are now taking a much wider interest in the use of

ICT to leverage better value out of their collections;

a simple internet search on museums and ICT

reveals many hits detailing museum activity “(White

et al., 2004).

It is worth mentioning the online versions of the

Romanian Peasant Museum (Bucharest), which

offers virtual tours and online visualizations’ or the

Louvre Museum, which exposes 3D reconstructions

of the museum’s artifacts. Even though they are not

implemented with an explicit educational objective,

they are significant examples of the innovative

technologies employed by online virtual museums.

Recently, several EU-funded research projects

have aimed at developing innovative technologies

for museums to create interactive 3D Virtual

Exhibitions on the Web. For instance, AMIRE is a

EU IST Program dedicated to the efficient creation

and modification of MR applications, authoring

metaphors and generic design recommendations and

procedures. In the ARCO project the elaboration

process is described as follows: “virtual exhibitions

are created by digitising museum artefacts, which

are then transformed into Virtual Representations,

which can be X3D or VRML models or scenes”

(White et al., 2004).

Another example is the virtual project “A

History of the World in 100 objects” (AHOW) run

by BBC Radio 4 and the British Museum in 2010

(Cmeciu and Cmeciu, 2013).

Within our project we sought to experiment with

several e-learning solutions for the community of

teachers and children at the secondary school of

Vădastra, in order to address the needs for informal

learning using modern IT technologies and e-

learning paradigms, and evaluate the effectiveness of

each particular solution for long-term use; for this

purpose we developed mobile-learning solutions

described in Ştefan and Gheorghiu (2013) and

Gheorghiu et al. (2013).

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5 THE RATIONALE OF THE

RESEARCH PROJECT

The village of Vădastra, Olt county, southern

Romania, was selected for several reasons: it is a

clear example of the deep cultural crisis experienced

by rural peripheral settlements in the early 21

century, a crisis brought about by rapid social

changes; it is here that a decade ago our university

had initiated a project to preserve the immaterial

heritage of the village traditional technologies.

We felt that an overview of the history of the

place (a palimpsest of successive habitations from

prehistory to modern times) could, apart from

facilitating learning, recreate a sense of its identity,

which had been erased during the country’s

totalitarian period. As a topic that might interest the

community through its pragmatic, economical

aspect, we insisted on the rediscovery of ancient and

traditional technologies, which form the immaterial

heritage of the place.

Centering the learning strategy on this subject,

the artists and technicians from our university began

to develop e-learning lessons teaching different

crafts representative for this geographical area.

Each of the solutions tested in the research

project has proven its effectiveness in enhancing

learning especially when solutions were designed

with a clear learning outcome and also

understandable for children to use, but also revealed

some limitations: the difficulty to use the solutions

outside the project because it required prohibitively

expensive equipment; insufficient teacher support

and insufficient engagement in the learning process.

This led us to the development of a more

intuitive solution, usable with the technological

means that the school already had, or could afford.

Initially, we designed a 3D virtual museum as an

informal e-learning environment for ancient

traditional technologies, considering that this would

better serve our learning objectives and prove

appropriate for the target community group.

Nevertheless we mixed the learning in a virtual

environment with practical classes in a blended

learning perspective (i.e., mixing several

technologies and learning styles for an optimal

learning outcome).

5.1 Research Questions

Our archaeological and pedagogical strategy was

formulated after a research which can be condensed

in the following questions:

a) which are the historical stages that can define the

identity of a place?

b) which are the contexts representative for each of

the identified periods?

c) which are the technologies representative for

each of the chosen contexts?

d) which are the objects representative for each of

the technologies?

6 CASE STUDY: THE 3D

VIRTUAL MUSEUM FOR A

VILLAGE COMMUNITY

(VĂDASTRA, SOUTH OF

ROMANIA)

After several archaeological experiments, a database

of videos and 3D reconstruction was created and

explored as a 3D virtual museum. Designed by

Professor Dragoş Gheorghiu on 3 levels, to suggest

the stratigraphy (sequence) of the major historical

periods in the Vădastra village (i.e. the modern,

Roman, and prehistoric), the museum contains

exhibits specific to each period, which are

augmented with videos representing craft

technologies.

These augmentations of the virtual space are

embedded in 3D virtual panels and are displayed as

still picture frames. A click on the panel launches

the videos in a separate window player.

The 3D virtual museum is implemented as a

Unity3D application integrated in the project’s

website (www.timemaps.net/timemap/?page_id=6).

The virtual museum can be explored in a game-

like manner: the mouse is used for camera

(perspective) control; the direction keys, for spatial -

temporal navigation.

To resemble a real museum, a character called

“The Guide” was created, with the role of providing

an explanation at the entrance of each level of the

museum. “The Guide” is designed as a friendly

persona, to engage the users, both children and

teachers, to explore the museum. It is similar to a

Non-Player Character in certain video games, but

designed with a limited functionality within the

virtual museum application.

6.1 The First Level of the Museum

The virtual Museum opens with a first “artistic”

room: here, visual artists and experimentalists’

interpretations of ancient and traditional objects are

presented, as models of revitalization of both the

high culture art and the folk art. Children learn that

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modern art can be inspired by the traditional one,

and artistic techniques to manufacture various

objects are explained to them.

From here on children travel in space and time

into the second room of the museum, which exhibits

Roman objects, reconstructions of the fragments

found in the village and in the nearby region and

exhibited at the Romanaţi Museum in Caracal.

The time travel continues to the prehistoric past

into the room displaying a Chalcolithic house

(excavated in Vădastra in the 70s), together with

reconstructed prehistoric everyday life objects.

Figure 2: The “Guide”.

6.2 The Second Level of the Museum

The second level is represented by the Roman

period. Many technologies, such as manufacturing

and pottery, or the textile art, have survived the

period with very small changes until the pre-

industrial period. This level has been reconstructed

to emphasize a villa rustica, discovered by the first

author near the village, in which different domestic

industries are showcased: pottery, weaving, glass

manufacturing or metal casting.

All the tools necessary for those technologies,

the complete form of the villa and the surrounding

landscape were reconstructed under the form of a

Unity 3D Virtual Reality. The hyper-realistic

reconstruction allows, as in the previous case, a

strong immersion of the visitor. The augmentation of

Figure 3: The Roman room of the virtual museum.

the 3D virtual space with records of the technologies

to be studied, contribute to this process of

immersion.

Figure 4: Objects in the Roman room of the virtual

museum.

6.3 The Third Level of the Museum

The third educational level of the museum is

represented by the Chalcolithic village (5

millennium BC), belonging to the eponymous

Vădastra culture. Here also we wanted to highlight

the technological traditions, especially the weaving

one, which, as has been noted after the exceptional

archaeological discovery of a prehistoric textile at

Celei, near the Vădastra village, had continuity until

relatively recent times. The children experience the

living space of the prehistoric settlement and access

the augmentations of the reconstructed house under

Figure 5: The prehistoric room of the virtual museum.

Figure 6: Objects in the prehistoric room of the virtual

museum.

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the form of videos presenting house construction

techniques and weaving techniques for the Celei

textile.

6.4 Technical Description

The modelling of the virtual museum was performed

with Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya specialized

software, which allowed not only to achieve the

realistic reconstructions, but also to implement

optimization techniques for the real time rendering

of the 3D scenes and objects, such as texture baking

and LOD (levels of details) optimization. The

Unity3D platform was used in order to integrate the

virtual museum in an online environment and to

implement the Mixed-Reality techniques.

Unity3D is an authoring tool and a gaming

engine for 3D video games and 3D interactive

content, which support programming in C ++ or C #

and also provides a powerful scripting language.

The reasons for selecting this platform were:

performance optimization for real time rendering;

multi-platform support for the Unity3D web plugin

(Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X) and for

applications (Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PlayStation

3, Wii, iPad, iPhone, Android); and the advanced

graphical editor.

To run the application in the web browser, the

Unity3D web plugin is required. This can be a

disadvantage when repeatedly running the

application, as the web plugin has to be loaded every

time. We tried to reduce this inconvenience by

capturing the user’s attention with explanatory texts.

6.5 The Methodology

The main purpose of our Virtual Museum is to

integrate pedagogy and new technology (Annetta et

al. 2006). The Museum offers a presentation of local

history and of the technologies specific to each

historical period in their historical context, by using

virtual reconstructions. By presenting historical

contexts virtually reconstructed, the design of the

Virtual Museum offers the learners a structured

information on: a) the objects of each context, in a

3D reconstruction; b) videos with technological

gestures for creation of these objects; c) a series of

performances of the usage of these objects during

the historical periods.

For supporting the e-learning tool, each

technology was filmed from at least two view

points: the actor’s view and the observer’s view. In

this way, the child who wishes to learn a certain

technology has a complete understanding of the

technological gestures. Teaching in a virtual and

immersive environment allows flexibility in

structuring the course material; the teacher having

the following pedagogical objectives: a) acquisition

of historical data; b) acquisition of technical data

and skill development during the presentation of the

technologies (Annetta et al. 2006).

It is worth mentioning the exploratory aspect of

the pedagogical and learning activities, by engaging

and capturing the attention of the children involved

in the learning process. For this aspect we used an

approach focused more on the direct teacher-learner

relation. First, during the history or technological

lessons, the local teacher navigates, together with the

children, through the site and the virtual

reconstructions, explaining to them the reconstructed

local history. The second phase is the

professional/practical approach: we organized

during the summer of 2012 and 2013 a series of

workshops (on textile and glass engraving) for the

children in Vădastra, where they worked under the

coordination of a teacher or a technician. During the

school semester, this experience was evaluated

remotely, from our university, in this way: a) the

teachers transmitted to the children a theme from the

Virtual Museum, which they individually studied. b)

the teachers organized video lessons in which each

child presented the results of his/her work, which

has been further corrected and evaluated. In this case

of learning by doing, the evaluation through

questionnaires was not applicable.

Beside the 3D Virtual Museum, traditional

methods of distance education were also used.

Skype-based videoconferences were organized at

our university in order to connect the academic

specialists with the teachers and children from

Vădastra, and to offer them various lesson plans. For

example, we proposed to visit the Neolithic village

and investigate how prehistoric art can be

transformed into modern art.

At the beginning the university artists proposed

different learning paths and explained in detail each

object and its corresponding technology. Thus, using

guided tours via Skype we could coordinate the

actions of the school teachers to efficiently use the

3D Virtual Museum, eventually leading to sufficient

proficiency so as to be able to create their own

lessons. As a conclusion of these learning practices,

Vădastra School has introduced two applied classes

(on ceramics and textile), where the children could

reproduce many of the Virtual Museum’s objects.

Consequently, our university has initiated with our

students an online course in order to supplement the

activity of the village teachers.

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7 RESULTS EVALUATION

In the case of using the Virtual Museum for learning

about the local history and for revitalization of arts

and crafts of immaterial heritage, we applied two

methods: a) the one of the local history teacher who

will use semi-structured interviews; b) the one of the

technology teacher who will use the visual contact

with the children (direct or via Skype) for

evaluation.

The 3D virtual museum was experimented for a

six-month period, during which the project team

provided technical and pedagogical assistance. The

experiments took place in the Vădastra secondary

school community, grades 1-4, 5-8, as well as in two

urban school communities, Râmnicu Vâlcea (Central

Romania) and Piatra Neamţ (North Romania),

allowing us to verify the effectiveness of our

learning methods in different cultural environments.

Throughout the experiments, monitoring was

performed by collecting feedback, suggestions, and

recording of technical problems, thus gathering an

important quantity of useful information. The data

was collected using Google Docs together with the

answers from 6 teachers (aged 25-40) and 9 children

(aged 8-15).

To use the site of the project as an applied

learning instrument, we further proposed a set of

refined questions focused on the virtual and real

experience of the children, which starts from mental

immersion and ends with the manufactured objects:

Table 1: Questionnaire for results evaluation.

Which was the most interesting historical period?

Which were the most interesting objects?

Which object have you chosen to make?

How much time did you work for the practical

workshop?

How much time did you work with the online

teachers?

How realistic did you find the architectural 3D

reconstructions? (answer with a mark from 1 to 7)

How realistic did you find the objects’ 3D

reconstructions? (answer with a mark from 1 to 7)

What have you learned from the 3D experience (local

history, manufacturing of objects, use of objects, a.o.)?

Which were the criteria for choosing an object (form,

texture, size, position in context)?

How many times did you play the film with the 3D

reconstruction of your object?

What have you learned from these films (form

construction, decoration making, a.o.)?

What can you make in the present? Can you

manufacture an object without help? (answer by

enumeration of the technological operations)

We also proposed a peer assessment (Aldrich,

2009), through which we asked the Vădastra school

teachers to assess the professors who coordinated the

lessons.

8 DISCUSSION

The post completion analysis of the project

identified the following limitations of the approach:

in some cases establishing the logical connection

between the 3D reconstructed objects and contexts

and the technological film required the viewers

(children) to have prior knowledge of the subject, or

to receive explicit guidance. Therefore, the learning

process within a virtual environment must allow the

teachers to design by themselves the guided tours,

i.e. to have a greater degree of flexibility.

In spite of the opinion expressed in Di Blas et al.

(2008), we considered the educational importance of

3D realistic reconstructions for the museum objects

while we performed simplifications regarding the

modelling of the museum space.

The technical problems were related only to the

quality of the Internet connection and the delay

caused by the loading of the Unity3D web plugin at

each application launch.

We used some of Aldrich’s (2009) suggestions to

perform assessments for “grading student

performance”, namely to write a paper about the

experience in the virtual museum, to keep a journal

during the experience, and create a multimedia

production, in our case weblog and Facebook

postings.

We appreciate that the educational advantages of

the mixed-reality experience in an immersive 3D

environment was highlighted by the following:

 The visual presentation of the exhibits

corresponding to different historical periods

allowed a good message retention and

understanding.

 The videos have increased the educational value

of the learning experience since they improved

the viewer’s sense of reality.

 The return to the 3D environment after viewing

the movies required a certain discipline and

patience in exploring the museum.

 After the guided tours, the children were able to

perform self-directed learning.

 We have identified cognitive (concentration,

memorization) and affective (enthusiasm, a sense

competition in navigation the space) components

to the learning process.

 The computer literacy was enhanced with

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concepts necessary to understand the new

learning environment (e.g. Virtual Reality).

9 CONCLUSIONS

The mixed-reality experiment presented was

designed and modelled with a well-defined

educational objective. The 3D virtual museum has

proved to be a creative tool, used both by teachers

and children in a flexible manner that allowed

learning without the constraints of the traditional

learning process and in an immersive and playful

manner. The 3D mixed-reality experience has

allowed children to immerse in a spatial and

temporal virtual environment while still maintaining

the connection to real life by watching the video

recordings.

This experiment led us to the conclusion that 3D

virtual museums, as an intuitive exploration space,

are a valid instrument of education. A 3D online

virtual museum designed for education can support

learning by doing and can accommodate a large and

distributed learning community. The experiment

showed interest and enthusiasm from the children

and teachers for the novel learning environment, as a

validation of the technology and approach we used.

10 FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

In order to capitalize on the present experience we

decided to develop a collaborative version of the 3D

virtual museum: Vădastra participants from

Bucharest, Râmnicu Vâlcea (Central Romania) or

Piatra Neamţ (North Romania) will have the

possibility of entering the museum in real time.

The new museum will allow the teaching of

traditional technologies under the form of guided

tours, accompanied by explanations. The function of

the “Guide” avatar will be extended providing a

more complex and animated character that will

deliver explanatory texts in front of each object and

indicating for each object the technological video

which needs to be played; the avatar movements will

be determined by the teacher: for example, a

professor in a remote location (our university or

Vădastra school) will indicate course keywords,

such as “Roman pottery” and the avatar will guide

the users only on the Roman level, presenting the

ceramic objects and the technology of pottery

making. The children will follow each object

presentation and will be able to ask questions using a

chat component. At the end of each lesson, children

will answer the questionnaire for learning

assessment using the qualitative and semi-structured

interviews presented at the Methodology paragraph

(see Table 1). The children will be also evaluated by

their objects and sketches made during the lessons.

The learning method that we propose is usable for

skills development in manufacturing of objects with

low level of difficulty, but at the same time it offers

the theoretical learning of making more complex

objects. The future strategy mentioned above will

require the design of the roles for each category of

users (teachers, children), and the activation of the

networking component of the Unity3D platform in

order to support the development of a Multiple User

Virtual Environment (MUVE) interactive

application. This will also require a more powerful

hardware infrastructure to ensure the required real-

time performance.

The project presented will help to create a

“community of learners” (Veen and Vrakking 2006).

An interesting case to be discussed is how our

approach generalizes in different European

communities. During 2013, we presented the project

to two urban communities from Portugal (Mação

and Abrantes), which proved interested to use the

results of the project as a pedagogical instrument for

protection of local immaterial heritage. Recently,

other communities from UK and the Netherlands

also adhered to the project.

The 3D Virtual Museum will therefore support

an extended virtual learning community, with

numerous real time participants and mixed-reality

lessons.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank the principal of the

Vădastra school, Vădastra village, Olt County,

Romania, and all the teachers and children for their

help and involvement in our experiments. The

authors also thank the professors and technicians

from our university for their collaboration.

Last, but not least, many thanks to Mr. Bogdan

Căpruciu for reviewing the English text and to the

anonymous reviewers whose comments helped us to

improve the text.

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