Critical Gaming: Interactive History and Virtual Heritage (Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities) by Professor Erik Champion

Author:Professor Erik Champion [Champion, Professor Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-09-27T21:00:00+00:00

Meaningful Interaction is Meaningful Learning

In the following chapters, I will examine issues of rituals and role-playing, and violence, but I will make the controversial suggestion that there are not many developed examples of virtual heritage projects addressing these issues because such projects typically do not have advanced thematic interaction. And I am not alone in this view – Maria Roussou decried the current state of meaningful interaction and learning in virtual reality (2005, p. 94):

To summarize, VR projects developed for museums or other, research-based educational VR studies have either not provided the analytical evidence to demonstrate learning or, where an educational impact was perceived, there is no explanation of how and why. And more importantly, the role of interactivity within learning has not been the focus of any of the evaluations carried out. Hence, the research question that emerges is how interactivity in a virtual learning environment can influence learning.

Whether cultural presence is transmitted via reading a palimpsest or by participating on a social stage, one must bear in mind that it can be perceived from the outside (etic cultural presence) or lived from the inside (emic cultural presence). Interaction is crucial in the creation of culture and, by extension, in the understanding of culture.

Games have the ability to synthesize narrative, conjecture, computer-generated objects, contextually constrained goals, real-time dynamic data and user-based feedback (Mateas and Stern, 2003). Through this interactive richness (rather than through a high-tech ability to reproduce elements of the real world), people can both learn and enjoy alterity (experience of the ‘other’). In a virtual heritage environment, the more one can master local cultural behaviour, the more one can understand significant events from the local cultural perspective. Mastery of dialogue and artefact use, as viewed from a local cultural perspective, may lead to enhanced cultural immersion and may consequently lead to a heightened sense of engagement.

Is it useful, desirable or even possible to interact with digital reconstructions of different cultures in a meaningful way? Could interaction actually interfere with the learning process? According to Black (2001), research has suggested that children desire interaction and personalization in museum exhibits, but others have suggested that successful cases of ‘edutainment’ are far too rare (Papert, 1998).

If we do manage to create an engaging and believable virtual environment, will the novelty or entertainment value actually interfere with the cultural understanding gained by the users? Sceptics may argue that an attempt to make the experience engaging by looking at game design hinders the cultural learning experience, damages actual historical learning and creates a false sense of authenticity. It is also possible that attempting to create contextual affordances and constraints will put too heavy a cognitive load on the audience or require a high degree of skill and a large amount of time immersed in a virtual environment. In virtual heritage environments, this is particularly evident in the conflict between individual freedom to explore and the more pragmatic need to convey historical information. For example, we may create an entertaining game, yet, however

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