The Ocean Game: Assessing Children's Engagement and Learning in a Museum Setting Using a Treasure-Hunt Game

The use of mobile interactive technology, in museum settings, has the potential of providing young audiences engaging and enjoyable learning activities. As museum visitors are increasingly looking for entertaining experiences inside museums, the dichotomy between learning and entertainment is blurring. In this paper, we present the Ocean Game, a treasure-hunt based mobile game in which 9-10 years old children search and collect a plethora of marine animals and learn about their key characteristics in the context of the Natural History Museum of Funchal (NHMF), Portugal. In this study, our aim was to fuse engagement and entertainment by offering a gaming experience in line with the learning goals of the museum. To evaluate the overall enjoyment and the information that was gained by the children, we compared the performance of players that were engaged with the Ocean Game with the performance of children taking a traditional guided tour. Analysis of the data supports our initial supposition, as children preferred to explore and enjoy the museum space through a gamified approach. Nevertheless, several shortcomings were found in the informal learning aspects of the game. Discussion and future work sections will tackle next steps regarding these issues.

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