DIGITIZATION AND GAMIFICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A DIGITAL SECONDARY EDUCATION PROGRAM FOR GREEK ART AND CULTURE

The present study aims at the use of innovative technologies for the creation of an educational program for teaching Greek art and culture as part of the school subject of “History”. Modern technologies such as digitization, long-term digital preservation, interoperability based on international metadata standards and augmented or/and mixed reality, gamification, and serious games will be used to support History teaching, in terms of becoming more attractive and effective for students. The strategy of using pupils' game experiences in the context of formal education aims to create incentives, facilitate learning, and even change students’ behavior towards the subject of “History”. The educational program, which is designed to meet the learning needs of both Secondary and High school students, will be applied for evaluation and feedback in real classroom teaching conditions. The evaluation of the program, which will be based on the students' psychological response, the identification of the students’ achievements and its user-friendliness as an educational tool, will help to highlight both its advantages and weaknesses for future research and improvement.

Digital games in Education support the construction of knowledge mainly through challenge, imagination and discovery of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the potential of digital technology in the teaching of Greek art as part of the cultural history of Greece from the prehistoric times until today. According to the above, the purpose of designing a digital educational program for Greek art and culture consists of two parameters: a) the psycho-pedagogic, which concerns the activation of the students’ interest and their response to the didactic methodology with the use of digital technology, and b) the cognitive, which refers to the assimilation of the taught lesson in history and the improvement of the learning outcomes.

The methodology of the study is based on the next steps:
• Data Selection and Documentation for Digitization. The first stage of the study is the collection and selection of the content for digitization. In this case, the material will be drawn mainly from the history books in secondary school education
• Digitization and Management of the Cultural Repository: Digitization, documentation and management of the digital cultural repository is based on an integrated digitization information system. The system offers digitization tools, applications for large cultural data management and advanced user management and Intellectual Property Rights protection.
• Use of Augmented Reality and Gamification Technologies. The cultural-education module of the overall proposed system is based on augmented reality and gamification technologies. Specialized applications are being developed, which offer, through a virtual augmented reality environment, games which assist pupils to re-live culture, interact with cultural objects and participate in historical events. The AR applications are gamified based on especially designed scenarios, avatar – role playing and a bonus – malus pedagogical strategy.
• Evaluation in the real class conditions. The overall system and the cultural-education program are evaluated in real time class conditions.

The evaluation is based on specific questionnaires and real time user observation so as to depict the overall system’s performance and evaluate the experience gained by the users – pupils.