A Virtual Tour of the Walls of Nicosia: An Assessment of Children's Experience and Learning Performance

Abstract

Modern-day museums employ technologically advanced methods and equipment to facilitate the dissemination of information and education of their visitors. Such a system is installed at the Leventis Municipal Museum in Nicosia. An interactive application that runs on a multi-touch table allows the user to navigate through a 3D representation of the fortifications of Nicosia in different historical periods. In this paper, we assess the visitors' experience and learning performance/effectiveness using this system. We compare the results with those achieved using a traditional method, which is by studying printed maps exhibited at the same museum. We performed this comparison with a user study, involving two groups of children, each using one of the two different methods. Results show that users enjoy using the system and that their learning performance is much higher than that of the traditional method.