Abstract:

Current research has demonstrated that museums use modern technologies in their education programs, which aim at creating participative and interactive learning environments as a complement to the formal education path set in schools and universities. These technologies are mainly visual technologies that centralize the image or the object in the communication together with interactive technologies, which ask visitors to act and/or choose. Virtual Reality (VR) is one popular type of the technologies used to achieve positive change in learning experience. VR and museums come together in multiple ways. The most common way is the concept of the virtual museum. A virtual museum can take various forms, depending on the manner in which the technology is applied and used. As the field of museum education with the use of VR is ever maturing, this paper attempts to systematically review the literature relevant to this topic. Three researchers collaborated to apply a qualitative method, coding and synthesizing the results using multiple criteria. Their main objective was to study the impact of Virtual Reality in museum education by detecting and discussing research trends and gaps. The research, which was conducted between September and November 2019, used Google Scholar and ProQuest data bases. The reviewed papers were selected with prior chosen keywords: Virtual Reality, Museum and Education. The keywords were combined while operating the Boolean operator “AND”. The selected papers were published in peer-reviewed journals, in English, between 2012 and 2019. The selection process consisted of four phases: identification round, first round of exclusion, second round of exclusion, and final inclusion round. This process was carried out separately for each database. The identified articles were collected in a shared RefWorks project.

Following the objective of the research, three main groups of articles were found. First, articles that focused on VR technologies in museum education were identified. More specifically, it was found that the majority of the studies of this group analyzed the different types of virtual reality systems or designs in museum education and the applications of virtual reality technologies in museum education. The second group of articles was related to the functionality or adoption of virtual museums, with a focus either on the educational functions of virtual museums, or on individuals’ learning experience in a virtual museum. The third group of articles was related to the theories of virtual museums. Moreover, the authors also reflected on the user groups and the research methodologies of the selected articles.

As a final step, the authors consolidated evidence for the benefit of academics and practitioners in the field of museum education interested in the efficient use of VR to promote active learning. Such evidence also provided potential options and pathways for future research.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, museum education, modern technologies, VR.