WHEN THE MUSEUM TURNS INTO A MIXED REALITY LAB. AUGMENTED REALITY AND LEARNING PROCESSES.

Even today, the scientific research of multimedia applied to museum education is almost completely to investigate. In fact, one of the programmatic commitments of the National Center for Museum Education has been to increase the knowledge of teaching equipment used in Italian museums and their relapses (Vertecchi, 1998). Different scientific researches in the “Media Education” field – see Jenkis, (2007), Turkle, (1995), Livingstone (2009) – underline that among young people from 6 to 18 years of age the most persuasive and effective tool of communication is represented by the Web and Social Media. In this perspective, the present research sought to structure the Rural Culture Museum of Martina Franca, Italy, (not known and valued in its full educational extent in behalf of the recovery of cultural and identity traditions) as a laboratory, involving a sample of school classes in experimenting the introduction of the Augmented Reality as a learning tool. The Augmented Reality is a technology that allows to add virtual contents to a physical environment, in interactive form and in real time. It is the superposition of levels of information (multimedia and virtual elements, Geo-localized data, etc …) to the real all-days life experience. The elements that “augment” the reality can be added through a mobile device, such as a last generation mobile phone (e.g. iPhone or another Android smart-phone), using a personal computer equipped with a web cam, with visual devices (e.g. VR glasses), listening (e.g. earphones) and with manipulation devices (e.g, VR gloves), which add multimedia information to the already perceived reality “in itself”. The overlap of real and virtual elements creates a “Mixed Reality”. I start my research from the hypothesis that with the introduction of the Augmented Reality the teaching-learning processes would be more effective (Arduini, 2012). In fact, with the integration of virtual contents in a real environment is possible to allow users to have a full immersion and engaging experience (De Kerchove, 2010). As for museum education and historical objects, using a smart-phone or a tablet of last generation with a specific application of AR, focusing the camera of the phone or tablet on the object of interest, it is possible to receive not only its current physical location inside the museum but also a variety of information regarding the history of the object, its features in different periods and its links to the reference culture. This stimulates the curiosity of the visitor who becomes an interactive user (Nardi, 1999) thus making the museum a place not only to visit, but a place of laboratory participation. In this perspective, the present research led the Rural Culture Museum of Martina Franca (TA) to structure itself as a laboratory, by involving 4 classes of primary school, 4 classes of first level of the secondary school and 4 classes of second level of the secondary school (for each type of school, 2 classes involved with device and 2 forming the control group, without device). The total sample involved 325 students; we proceeded by evaluating the learning levels produced by the introduction of the AR technology, by analyzing the resulting data and comparing them with those of the control sample.