MoMAt: a Mobile Museum Adaptive tour

Technology is pervading every aspect of our daily lives to an ever greater extent. This is borne out by the fact that computers although increasingly powerful, are becoming smaller and smaller, barely more than the size of a cell phone. Cultural heritage institutions are well aware that in order to attract a high number of visitors they now need to offer ever more advanced technology. Many statistical studies, in fact, have shown that most visitors to a museum devote very little time to their visit, racing around the whole building while spending very little time at each single work. One solution commonly adopted nowadays is to install multimedia guides that can stimulate visitors' interest and motivation to acquire a deeper understanding. However, it is not always enough to offer multimedia content to guarantee better learning. Our research aimed to integrate our experience of adaptive learning, gained in the field of e-learning studies, in interactive museum guide systems. This paper presents MoMAT, a system allowing tailored use of multimedia content, based on an assessment of the users' preferred cognitive styles.