Digital Cultural Heritage

This chapter aims to give information about how the digitalization process is using technologies suitable for today's conditions in the transmission of cultural heritage to future generations and its preservation, what methods are being employed, the concept of digital heritage, the developments that took place and the projects that were carried out in the digitization of cultural heritage. In addition, it is also aimed in this chapter to evaluate the cultural heritage sites within the framework of this new understanding and to examine how these areas can be redefined with new technical possibilities. At this point, after reviewing the literature about the cultural and digital heritage, the importance of cultural heritage is referred to in detail. Finally, a case study is conducted by the authors via compiling the V-must.net website established to develop virtual museums, blog comments, and academic studies carried out in respect to this project.

Designing, Realizing, Running, and Evaluating Virtual Museum – a Survey on Innovative Concepts and Technologies

This paper presents a survey of innovative concepts and technologies involved in virtual museums (ViM) that shows their advantages and disadvantages in comparison with physical museums. We describe important lessons learned during the creation of three major virtual museums between 2010 and 2020 with partners at universities from Armenia, Germany, and Chile. Based on their categories and features, we distinguish between content-, communication- and collaboration-centric museums with a special focus on learning and co-curation. We give an overview of a generative approach to ViMs using the ViMCOX metadata format, the curator software suite ViMEDEAS, and a comprehensive validation and verification management. Theoretical considerations include exhibition design and new room concepts, positioning objects in their context, artwork authenticity, digital instances and rights management, distributed items, private museum and universal access, immersion, and tour and interaction design for people of all ages. As a result, this survey identifies different approaches and advocates for stakeholders’ collaboration throughout the life cycle in determining the ViM's direction and evolution, its concepts, collection type, and the technologies used with their requirements and evaluation methods. The paper ends with a brief perspective on the use of artificial intelligence in ViMs.

Evaluating creative drama studies in virtual museums with teacher opinions

The aim of this research is to evaluate creative drama studies in virtual museums with teacher opinions in order to ensure the revival of national cultural values through art. Qualitative research method was used in the study. The data were collected by the semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. The study involved 25 elementary school classroom teachers working in various primary schools in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, in the 2020-2021 academic year. As a result of the research, it was revealed that teachers found themselves inadequate in virtual museums and creative drama, but considered the use of these applications in education extremely positive. In-service training programs to be prepared for teachers to gain competence in the field of creative drama in the virtual museum will enable them to use this method more effectively in education, which they find effective in learning. Keywords: Creative drama, national cultural values, teacher opinion, virtual museum.

The strategic governance of the digital accounting environment: insights from virtual museums

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the strategic governance of the digital transformation of the accounting environment in cultural organizations, with a specific focus on practices of social responsibility and stakeholder engagement in virtual museums. Design/Methodology/Approach By adopting a multiple case study approach, this study investigated five Italian virtual museums and their digitalization processes. Data were collected and triangulated from multiple sources, including documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with 16 key informants. Findings Considering the digitalization of the accounting environment as a paradigmatic change, the authors identify three key transitions for its strategic governance: from the static, technical and physical to the relational, emotional and digital; from bureaucratic managerialism to value cocreation; and from traditional CSR to integrated external engagement. Moreover, the authors found that social responsibility and stakeholder engagement practices are used in a limited way, and that the use of social media appears to be increasingly important and to be carried out through an emergent rather than a deliberate strategy. Research Limitations/Implications The paper draws from a limited sample of case studies in one country and is based on exploratory research. This paper calls for more comparative studies using a longitudinal approach to investigate the impacts of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations. Originality/Value This study is one of the few studies concentrating on the effects of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations.

Using Virtual Museums to Promote Activity Design Competencies for Out-of-School Learning in Pre-Service Teacher Education

Virtual solutions of museums can be notably used to promote distance learning activities by providing information about their collections. However, the effective use of this potential depends mainly on the exact alignment of the learning activities with the educational goals. For this purpose, this study focuses on the analysis of pre-service teachers’ activity designs based on virtual museum visits for out-of-school learning environments. Within the scope of the case study design, 40 activity plans developed by pre-service teachers for elementary mathematics, science, and classroom teaching were examined. The activity designs for selected virtual museums emerged as a result of a semester program. The research findings indicated that the activities emphasized the strategies of supporting learning outcomes, the guidance process for students in the virtual museum environment, and the engagement of the student with the virtual environment. Based on this, the study revealed that using virtual museums as a teaching tool for pre-service teachers supports teachers’ knowledge and skills of the activity design.

Virtual museums using in the process of tourism disciplines studying

The article substantiates the feasibility of virtual museums introducing into the process of studying tourism disciplines. The main advantages of implementing virtual museums such as accessibility (in particular for people with disabilities, low-income and imposed isolation), interactivity, informativeness, time limitless, safety, reliability and modernity have been identified. The use of virtual museums in different forms of pedagogical activity is described: work in and out of the class, advanced training and diagnostic tools. The results of a student survey, which confirmed the expediency of virtual excursions using in the educational process (it is interesting for students, increases the level of mastering professionally oriented knowledge and skills, contributes to the development of a sustainable in-depth interest in communicating with museum objects, the development of creative abilities, the formation of media competence) are presented. It is shown that virtual museums provide an opportunity to fill the learning process with new interesting content through the use of modern Internet technologies.

INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL OBJECTS (IVOs) FOR NEXT GENERATION OF VIRTUAL MUSEUMS: FROM STATIC TEXTURED PHOTOGRAMMETRIC AND HBIM MODELS TO XR OBJECTS FOR VR-AR ENABLED GAMING EXPERIENCES

Virtual museums should not live on the internet through traditional applications sharing collections through simple panoramas or static images and descriptions but reach novel innovative and interactive forms of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), providing a more creative, intimate, personal learning experience. For this reason, the authors propose a method based on advanced Information Technologies (IT) to fully return the tangible and intangible values of different type of works of art. The primary purpose of this study is to create a system of virtual environments through which the digital user, mainly the visitor of an unconventional museum, will be able to physically interact, through visual and tactile methods, with 3D digital models of sculptures, information, and art objects. Thanks to the integration of the latest 3D modelling and digital survey techniques with the Visual Programming Language (VPL) and eXteded Reality (XR) development platforms, authors propose new levels of interactivity between users and Interactive Virtual Objects (IVOs) capable of coming to life, sharing new forms of real-time human-computer interaction for VR-AR enabled gaming experiences and virtual museums, using multiple devices such VR headset, web-based AR platforms, mobile phones, tablets, and PC workstation.

An Inheritance Mode of Rural Cultural Heritage Based on Virtual Museum in China

In China, there is a crisis of rural cultural heritage inheritance due to urbanization. The traditional cultural inheritance modes such as building museums may not satisfy the needs of wide and fast culture transmission, communication, and inheritance. However, the virtual museum may provide new solutions. Nowadays, China has essential social-economic conditions for virtual museum construction but lacks sustainable modes for virtual museums supporting rural cultural heritage inheritance. In this study, we adopted the theoretical analysis method, expert argumentative method, and combined with virtual museum technology analysis to design an appropriate mode for the cultural heritage’s inheritance in rural areas. We built a demonstrational virtual museum for the Mt. Mogan government according to this mode, adopted a comparative analysis and questionnaire survey to verify, and assess the application effects of the mode. Results show that the inheritance mode of rural cultural heritage based on the virtual museum has advantages of larger exhibition scale and wider scope of cultural transmission and communication with less input, and this mode’s operation is steady and sustainable. The inheritance crisis of rural cultural heritage needs reasonable solutions, and our results can be a guideline for building virtual museums in rural areas to promote wide, fast, and sustainable cultural inheritance.

Pre-Service History Teacher’s Opinions About the Use of Virtual Museum Applications in History Courses

The opportunities offered by technology are used in educational processes to make education more qualified. One of the technology-based applications is virtual museums. Virtual museums make important contributions to bringing the works of art in museums to the classroom environment and making the lesson more concrete and understandable. Especially considering the exhibition of the past, virtual museums could be used for history courses but more research needs to be done on the subject. This study aimed at exploring pre-service history teachers’ opinions and experiences about virtual museum applications. The research was conducted via qualitative research approach and phenomenology design in line with the nature of this approach. The study group of the research consists of 15, 3rd grade teacher candidates studying in Department of History Teaching at Marmara University Atatürk Education Faculty in 2020-2021 academic year. The data was collected via semi-structured interview form and analysed using the content analysis method. Considering the results obtained, it was reported that the participants responded considering the pandemic conditions, they regarded technology as a way to facilitate the learning-teaching processes of history courses and stated that virtual museum applications would contribute to history courses.