Today, immersive content is being used in various areas in museum. Among them, as a museum exhibition, immersive content allows visitors to immersive content allows visitors to collectively handle real exhibits with restrictions on physical access thr...
Today, immersive content is being used in various areas in museum. Among them, as a museum exhibition, immersive content allows visitors to immersive content allows visitors to collectively handle real exhibits with restrictions on physical access through experiences based on physical and sensory activities. Furthermore, it provides a vivid experience of being placed at the historical site right inside the museum beyond the limit of time and space. In this way, immersive content enables immersive experience into a virtual environment that gives realism. This possibility is bringing about the necessity of discussing the immersion experience as a new educational experience that appears when immersive content is used as an museum education related exhibitions.
The purpose of this study is to explore the immersion experience of participants in museum education related immersive content and to examine its essential characteristics. The study questions set up to achieve the purpose of study are as follows. The first research question is to check what the characteristics of immersive content are in museum education related exhibitions. And the second study question examines the essential characteristics of immersion experienced by participants in the museum education related immersive content. The last study question examines the practical context and meaning of how participants experience this immersion through the museum education related immersive content from the perspective of museum education.
In order to solve such study problems, the Hanam Museum of History’s ‘Education related to the Iseongsanseong Fortress immersive exhibition’ was selected as the study institution and program. In addition, four adults in their 20s and 30s as MZ generation, who are most familiar with digital technology, media, and culture, and create their own new results in a virtual environment were studied. The research process was conducted with phenomenological research among qualitative research methods. As a specific procedure, study results were finally derived through prior study and theoretical background review, study institutes and programs selection, preliminary research, data collection, and analysis.
In this process, it was found that the museum’s immersive content supports communication between the museum and visitors by effectively delivering the information and messages to be conveyed in the exhibition through expanded experiences. In addition, the immersion experienced through these immersive content is triggered based on various sensory stimuli and direct/indirect interactions, and appeared in the form of concentration, deviation, curiosity, and pleasure.
As a result of the study, it was confirmed that the essential characteristics of participants' immersion in museum education related immersive education is actions such as 'discover', ‘emerge', and 'draw' that appear in the process rather than being deeply immersed in an object. First of all, the participants found the necessary information by directly experiencing using their senses or movements in an unknown virtual environment. By interacting with immersive content in an appropriate way, hidden content and meaning were brought out. Curiosity and voluntary participation that arise at this time allow them to discover and understand the content and meaning of the inquiry object by themselves.
Second, the participants in the education vividly confirmed the past rationality while crossing the virtual and the real. The participants understood three-dimensionally while seeing, hearing, and feeling the virtual rationality that was realistically realized through immersive content and it was reaffirmed from the actual excavated artifacts. Through this connection of virtual and reality, participants in the education experienced the site of the past fortress and fortress in the museum. In addition, while feeling the interest in the virtual reality as a research subject, the participants have curiosity and anticipation for the real reason.
Finally, the participants of the training drew the scene in detail in their heads based on the rationality they found and confirmed themselves in the virtual world. At this time, the scenes in the immersive content became a rough sketch of the imagination, and the lifestyle in Iseongsanseong Fortress, which I experienced and looked at, reminded me of the scene vividly as if I had been to it. Through the act of drawing in this way, the understanding and interpretation of Iseongsanseong Fortress were expanded.
In this study, the meaning and essence of the immersion experience of educational participants appearing in using immersive content for museum education related to immersive content was explored. Through this, it was possible to examine the new learner’s experience found when immersive content was used as museum education related exhibition. By examining the experience of participant immersion in education linking sensory content that provides a new virtual educational environment, we can expect the use of sensory content in museum education in the future and new educational effects through it.