Opportunities of museum pedagogy in 3D VR space

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a wide range of opportunities offered by museums in the field of education. The museum pedagogy of the last decades offers opportunities-in more conscious and creative ways-for both children and adults, as it takes into account the age of museum visitors. The programmes are available not only offline, but also online, using the form of virtual guided tours and museum pedagogical sessions. The pandemic period has intensified the need and importance of online programs. Our study presents a school history collection that has been created and organised by the Apáczai Csere János Faculty of Széchenyi István University of Győr. Due to the results of the university developments the interactive presentation of the collection, and the virtual implementation of different museum pedagogical activities has been supported by the MaxWhere 3D VR program.

Full text

Opportunities of museum pedagogy in
3D VR space
Bálint Lampert
Education, Humanities and Sciences
Széchenyi István University; Apáczai Csere János Faculty
Győr, Hungary
lampert.balint@sze.hu
Viktória Kövecsesné Gősi
Education, Humanities and Sciences
Széchenyi István University; Apáczai Csere János Faculty
Győr, Hungary
gosi.viktoria@sze.hu
Andrea Gróz
Education, Humanities and Sciences
Széchenyi István University; Apáczai Csere János Faculty
Győr, Hungary
groz.andrea@sze.hu
Lajosné Csenger
Education, Humanities and Sciences
Széchenyi István University; Apáczai Csere János Faculty
Győr, Hungary
csenger.lajosne@sze.hu
Attila Pongrácz
Education, Humanities and Sciences
Széchenyi István University; Apáczai Csere János Faculty
Győr, Hungary
pongracz.attila@sze.hu
Abstract— Nowadays, there is a wide range of opportunities
offered by museums in the field of education. The museum
pedagogy of the last decades offers opportunities – in more
conscious and creative ways - for both children and adults, as it
takes into account the age of museum visitors. The programmes
are available not only offline, but also online, using the form of
virtual guided tours and museum pedagogical sessions. The
pandemic period has intensified the need and importance of
online programs. Our study presents a school history collection
that has been created and organised by the Apáczai Csere János
Faculty of Széchenyi István University of Győr. Due to the results
of the university developments the interactive presentation of the
collection, and the virtual implementation of different museum
pedagogical activities has been supported by the MaxWhere 3D
VR program.
Keywords—museum pedagogy; Max Where 3D VR
Program; teacher training
I. INTRODUCTION
The Janka Kasztner School History Collection school history
collection that has been created and organised by the Apáczai
Csere János Faculty of Széchenyi István University of Győr.
Due to the results of the university developments the
interactive presentation of the collection, and the virtual
implementation of different museum pedagogical activities
has been supported by the MaxWhere 3D VR program.
II. THE ROLE OF MUSEUMS IN EDUCATION, THE CONCEPT OF
MUSEUM PEDAGOGY
"The most important value of a museum is that it stimulates
imagination, awakens curiosity, interest and children are
ready to delve into all that was captivating to them in the
exhibition. A museum gives children a chance to admire
everything that was out of their sight, but the most important
thing is to stare at the wonders of the world. "
Tamás Vásárhelyi [3]
Nowadays museums offer a wide range of educational and
cultural opportunities. The museum demands active,
intellectual cooperation from the visitors, forcing them to
concentrate, to activate the observing consciousness, to think
logically. It also develops imagination. It plays a major role in
satisfying students' individual interests, developing their
fantasy, and using their leisure time in creative and valuable
ways. The museum contributes to make education more
enjoyable, to supplement the school knowledge and to
implement the experiential way in pedagogical practice. The
usefulness of a museum depends on the ways it is used. An
exhibition itself cannot be enough to increase the visitors’
knowledge. It is only a useful tool that should be effectively
incorporated into the educational process.
According to Cseri [2]: “Museum pedagogy is a complex
activity that conveys all-museum-knowledge and is expressed
in exhibitions, catalogues, guided tours, museum sessions,
methodological guides and publications.… it is a basic activity
of the museum, which conveys knowledge between the
specific educational material accumulated in the museum and
the visitor by creating conditions, in a complex way, striving
for experientialism taking into account the characteristics of
the museum. In this way, it contributes to the general culture
of society and, through the mediation of national cultural
heritage, carries out the cultivation of the public in the
broadest sense [1,2,3]." Dewey's concept clearly broke with
Herbart’s "book school" theory, which had dominated until
then, as it focused on children's practical activities and
knowledge in their learning process. This idea provides the

most important basis for museum pedagogy, as nowadays the
most important forms of learning in a museum are learning
through objects, actions, and interactivity [1,4]. Nowadays,
due to the development of the learning conception of
constructive pedagogy, museum pedagogy can play an
increasingly important role in teaching-learning process,
supplementing formal education. In the process of lifelong
learning, learning in a museum supports the development of
new attitudes, interests, evaluations, beliefs and values
[1,3,5,6].
III. SCHOOL HISTORY COLLECTION IN TEACHER TRAINING OF
GYŐR
“Like a secret conjecture of the soul, the magic of attraction
flared up in me every time I crossed the threshold of this
school. I was captivated by gracious love and I felt as if my
soul had found another home within the poor greyish white
walls of the school. And indeed, this quiet, simple world has
become my world since then. It is the place where the love for
my future vocation began and took root.”
Janka Lázár Kasztner [7]
In Győr, in the Rómer Flóris Museum of Art and History, the
museum pedagogical work is carried out at international level
to which some lecturers of Apáczai Csere János Faculty could
join. (https://romer.hu/muzeumpedagogia/). Relying on this
professional relationship, our faculty considers it important to
explore and research the values of the past, and to convey
culture to our students by applying the tools of museum
pedagogy [18]. The creation of the collection of Apáczai
Csere János Faculty of Széchenyi István University was
started in 1996 by the lecturers of the former Department of
Pedagogy. They were Endre Markó, Károly Marton, Lajos
Csehi and Kálmánné Wappel. As the result of the work of
Professor Mária Kováts - Németh, the museum was opened in
this form for the 230th anniversary of teacher training in Győr
in 2008. The museum took the name of Janka Kasztner on the
Teachers' Day in spring of 2019.
The material of the School History Museum on the one hand
consists of the personal collection of the lecturers and the
memories of primary school teachers with gold, silver and
bronze degrees. On the other hand it consists of some parts of
the pedagogical document collection of our faculty. The
collection has been greatly enriched by donations from the
relics of former teachers. In addition to material memories, we
also have a significant number of primary and secondary
sources. We have for example monographs, bulletins,
textbooks for students, methodological books for teachers,
pictures, diplomas, photo materials, awards, curricula, lesson
plans, certificates. Trainee teachers and children can take part
in a time travel back to the past by the age-appropriate school
interior, as it presents the school, children and teachers of
bygone ages.
IV. OPPORTUNITIES OF MUSEUM PEDAGOGY IN MAXWHERE 3D
VR SPACE
Cognitive infocommunications as a field integrates many
aspects of human factors and users’ perspective. Cognitive
functions create boundaries and limitations around usability
and accessibility and system designers have to deal with such
issues by adopting a human centered approach [25].
There have been several attempts to define VR accurately, but
a uniform definition has still not been formulated [19]. In its
colloquial sense, the word ‘virtual’ is often used to refer to
something that is not real, but is a manifestation that somehow
resembles a real counterpart. Although widespread
associations behind the term ‘virtual’ most often have to do
with digital manifestations that resemble physical objects [26].
According to the interpretation of the Hungarian Ollé [22], the
virtual environment is a three-dimensional (3D), artificial,
non-real space. In this space, we and others can be present in
three-dimensional form, in the same space and time, and we
see it all from the same point of view.
According to Lopreiato [19, 20]: the virtual environment is a
wide variety of computer applications that are usually
associated with captivating, highly visual, 3D features. They
allow the participant to look around and navigate a seemingly
real or physical world.
According to the US Department of Defense [19, 21]: VR is
the use of computing to create an interactive three-
dimensional world in which objects perceive spatial presence;
virtual environment and virtual world are synonymous with
virtual reality.
A common and essential feature of these spaces is that they
can be connected by computer-based, online, collaborative and
technical devices [22]. Virtual reality is a simulated
environment that seeks to describe and simulate real-world
processes using a computer model. This is a partly common
and shared space where different users can be present at the
same time. The event, the activity takes place in real time and
the internet applications provide an opportunity for direct
communication and cooperative work. Users can create and
develop different materials and edit common documents [13,
23]. The advantage of a VR environment is that it is
accessible, regardless of space and time, cost-effective and
user-friendly. The 3D VR learning environment is much more
effective at obtaining, filtering, and receiving information than
traditional education tools. The processing and use of
information is supported by an orderly and parallel display of
information [10, 13, 23.]
During the activity and education in the 3D virtual spaces, the
interested educator and student can obtain the information
necessary for learning by entering the consciously installed
virtual educational spaces. The set-up space makes activities
in the digital environment more spectacular. It can speed up
the acquisition of information and make easier to carry out
collaborative activities [11,12].
Among the virtual spaces available today, there are Hungarian
developments as well. One example is MaxWhere that is
being developed with the involvement of Széchenyi István
University. MaxWhere can be used in education, project
management, presentation, interactive 3D presentations. In
addition to development of Moodle framework, the
MaxWhere platform is in the focus of the curriculum
development of Széchenyi István University. MaxWhere is a

user-friendly and freely accessible software that is available at
www.maxwhere.com. Using MaxWhere can speed up work
procedures, so its use in education can play an important role.
The well-designed and organised space offers a path of
development and learning that is thought to be effective. In
addition, as the content is filtered by one of the creators, the
user can only work from authentic sources. It also allows you
to use different educational applications in VR space.
MaxWhere spaces have smartboards where digital materials
we want to display in space can be loaded. Each smartboard
can be considered as a separate “monitor”, where several file
types (text, image, video, installed audio, etc.), websites,
applications can be displayed and used. MaxWhere also
provides a cloud-based service, so there is no need to send
files, because everything is immediately available when we
enter the system or the given VR space.
Movements in space are done with the mouse, where the scroll
wheel and keys help in moving accurately, and suggested
routes for learning materials can also be set [8,9,10,13,14].
Fig. 1. School History Collection in MaxWhere 3D VR space
V. DESCRIPTION OF THE VR SPACE
The material of the Janka Kasztner School History Collection
has been arranged in the MaxWhere VR space of the Apáczai
Csere János Faculty of the University of Széchenyi.
Fig. 2. The MaxWhere VR space of tge Apáczai Csere János Faculty
The VR space includes ten smartboards, the content of which
is presented below.
One of the smartboards is suitable for uploading loading links.
This is located on the monitor on the VR space desk. It is seen
from the back on the left side of the screen saver.
Fig. 3. Entering the School History Collection VR space
Entering the space, there can be seen an arched wall with three
smartboards. On the middle largest board there have been
placed a greeting for the visitors. A timeline showing the
history of the Apáczai Faculty has been inserted on the left-
side smartboard. On the right-side smartboard there can be
read a brief description of the history of the collection and a
short overview of Janka Kasztner’s biography. (Fig. 3.)
Fig. 4. Smartboards of the School History Collection 1.
Going further to the right, there are five smartboards on the
wall. The first board shows the Protocollum (der
Präparenden), in which the list of students of each grade has
been registered since the establishment of the institution in
1778. (Fig. 4.)
The following board presents some methodological textbooks
used in teacher training in Győr.
The next board shows some of the original teacher diplomas.
These are among the most valuable materials of the collection.
In the photographs of the next board, we would like to present
a classroom that demonstrate the characteristics of the given
age with its furniture and decorations.
On the last table we placed a set of knowledge measuring
tasks, which was created using the Learningapps application.
We would like to help to deepen the most important
knowledge of the collection with three interesting tasks. In the
first task, the main events in the history of the Apaczai Faculty

should be placed on a timeline. The second task is a matching
task that helps to recognize the furnishing objects of the
school classroom from the good old days. In the last task, the
old names of the pieces of furniture should be paired with their
explanations. (Fig. 5.)
Fig. 5. Smartboards of the School History Collection 2.
Tasks can be played in space using a hyperlink, but can also
be solved on a smartphone using QR codes.
The tenth smartboard of the VR space presents the special
edition of the Alumni Magazine of the University of
Széchenyi as it introduces the Faculty of Apáczai.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors say thank you for the VR Learning Centre of the
Széchenyi István University Győr
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