SOS Museum, a gamified learning app for cultural heritage preservation tailored for school visits: observational insights

Abstract

This paper intends to systematize a first quantitative study based on the frequency of observable behaviors related to the implementation of a gamified mobile app built to raise awareness about risk management and preservation issues at the Military Museum of Porto, Portugal. The purpose of this study was to acknowledge, compare, and analyze the behavioral changes of a group of students (n=84) aged between 8 to 12 years old divided into two groups: experimental and control. Obtained results will assist a deeper and future analysis addressing infocommunicational problems in gamification processes and their relationship with knowledge in the museum context. The first results show that, by comparison to the control group, visitors were more excited, had more sense of urgency, were mutually aiding each other, and had more efficient communication and collaboration by completing tasks quickly and effectively, throughout the 30-minute average duration of the experience.