Cognition-Based Evaluation of Visualisation Frameworks for Exploring Structured Cultural Heritage Data

It is often claimed that Information Visualisation (InfoVis) tools improve the audience’s engagement with the display of cultural heritage (CH) collections, open up CH content to new audiences and support teaching and learning through interactive experiences. But there is a lack of studies systematically evaluating these claims, particularly from the perspective of modern educational theory. As far as the author is aware no experimental investigation has been undertaken until now, that attempts to measure deeper levels of user engagement and learning with InfoVis tools. The investigation of this thesis complements InfoVis research by initiating a human-centric approach since little previous research has attempted to incorporate and integrate human cognition as one of the fundamental components of InfoVis. In this thesis, using Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives as well as individual learning characteristics (i.e. cognitive preferences), I have evaluated the visitor experience of an art collection both with and without InfoVis tools (between subjects design). Results indicate that whilst InfoVis tools have some positive effect on the lower levels of learning, they are less effective for higher levels. In addition, this thesis shows that InfoVis tools seem to be more effective when they match specific cognitive preferences. These results have implications for both the designers of tools and for CH venues in terms of expectation of effectiveness and exhibition design; the proposed cognitive based evaluation framework and the results of this investigation could provide a valuable baseline for assessing the effectiveness of visitors’ interaction with the artifacts of online and physical exhibitions where InfoVis tools such as Timelines and Maps along with storytelling techniques are being used

Περιβαλλοντικοί παράγοντες που σχετίζονται με την ανάπτυξη του καρκίνου του πνεύμονα

Ο καρκίνος του πνεύμονα είναι το είδος του καρκίνου που ξεκινά από τα κύτταρα και τους ιστούς των πνευμόνων. Αποτελεί τη βασική αιτία θανάτου από καρκίνο στις ανεπτυγμένες χώρες αλλά και παγκοσμίως. Ο καρκίνος του πνεύμονα σχετίζεται άμεσα με περιβαλλοντικούς παράγοντες και κυρίως με το κάπνισμα. Αναμφισβήτητα, ο καπνός από το τσιγάρο μπορεί να αποτελεί το μείζον καρκινογόνο αίτιο, ωστόσο υπάρχουν κι άλλοι περιβαλλοντικοί παράγοντες που έχουν βλαπτικές επιδράσεις και οδηγούν στα διάφορα είδη του καρκίνου του πνεύμονα όπως είναι οι πολυκυκλικοί αρωματικοί υδρογονάνθρακες, ο αμίαντος, οι ενώσεις νικελίου και το ραδόνιο. Επιπλέον, η αστική ρύπανση είναι ένας παράγοντας που επηρεάζει αρκετά τους κατοίκους των πόλεων με δυσμενείς επιπτώσεις στο αναπνευστικό τους σύστημα με οξέα φαινόμενα και μακροχρόνιες βλάβες. Ο σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας είναι να συσχετιστούν οι παράγοντες του περιβάλλοντος διαβίωσης με την ανάπτυξη του καρκίνου του πνεύμονα. Είναι πολύ σημαντικό να μειωθούν δραστικά όλοι οι περιβαλλοντικοί καρκινογόνοι παράγοντες και να καταργηθεί, αν είναι εφικτό, το ενεργητικό και παθητικό κάπνισμα. Έτσι η βλαπτική επίδραση του περιβάλλοντος στους ανθρώπους θα είναι πολύ μικρότερη και θα μειωθεί η συνολική επίπτωση του καρκίνου του πνεύμονα. Η μεθοδολογία που χρησιμοποιήθηκε ήταν η συλλογή δεδομένων από προηγούμενες μελέτες, από βάσεις δεδομένων όπως το pubmed και από διεθνείς και τοπικούς οργανισμούς.Lung cancer is the type of cancer that begins in the cells and tissues of the lungs. It is the leading cause of cancer death in developed countries and worldwide. Lung cancer is related to environmental factors and mainly to smoking. Undoubtedly, cigarette smoke may be the major carcinogenic cause, however there are other environmental factors that have damaging effects and lead to various types of lung cancer such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, asbestos, nickel compounds and radon. In addition, air pollution is a factor that greatly affects residents in towns with adverse effects on their respiratory system with acute effects and long-term damage. The purpose of the present work is to correlate living environment factors with the development of lung cancer. It is very important to drastically reduce all environmental carcinogens and eliminate, if possible, active and passive smoking. Thus the harmful effect of the environment on humans will be much less and the overall incidence of lung cancer will be reduced. The methodology that was used includes data collection from previous studies, from databases such as pubmed and from international and local organizations

Semantic Representation and Location Provenance of Cultural Heritage Information: the National Gallery Collection in London

This paper describes a working example of semantically modelling cultural heritage information and data from the National Gallery collection in London. The paper discusses the process of semantically representing and enriching the available cultural heritage data, and reveals the challenges of semantically expressing interrelations and groupings among the physical items, the venue and the available digital resources. The paper also highlights the challenges in the creation of the conceptual model of the National Gallery as a Venue, which aims to i) describe and understand the correlation between the parts of a building and the whole; ii) to record and express the semantic relationships among the building components with the building as a whole; and iii) to be able to record the accurate location of objects within space and capture their provenance in terms of changes of location. The outcome of this research is the CrossCult venue ontology, a fully International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM) compliant structure developed in the context of the CrossCult project. The proposed ontology attempts to model the spatial arrangements of the different types of cultural heritage venues considered in the project: from small museums to open air archaeological sites and whole cities

A Museum App to Trigger Users' Reflection

International audienceThis paper introduces a mobile museum guide that has been designed for the National Gallery in London with the special goal of triggering reflection of the visitor. We also present the results obtained from a first experiment. The underlying postulate is that visitors are more prone to reflection and more interested by the collection in a museum if they can discover it through other facets than those highlighted solely in the museum, and if this discovery is personalised for each of them. The smart guide includes means to personalise a visit by modelling the user preferences and behaviour, and builds recommendations for stories or groups of paintings based on the user profile and reflective topics

Reliving the experience of visiting a gallery : methods for evaluating informal learning in games for cultural heritage

When evaluating the effectiveness of gamified app experiences in cultural heritage venues in terms of informal learning outcomes, a core challenge is the complexity involved in assessing intangible measures such as visitors’ appraisal of artwork. A comprehensive summary of the literature for conducting museum visitor evaluations is needed in order to understand how to measure the impact of gamification on user engagement, and the enhancement of the cultural heritage experience on learning. This paper first reviews related literature regarding the application of intrusive versus nonintrusive user evaluation methods, focusing on the REMIND protocol for conducting experiments with museum visitors. We relay our findings when applying the REMIND protocol in four gamified cultural heritage applications in the CrossCult project. Focusing on the assessment of informal learning in an application specifically designed for the visitors of the National Gallery of London, the paper concludes with recommendations, challenges, and future steps in evaluating games for cultural heritage.peer-reviewe

On how technology-powered storytelling can contribute to cultural heritage sustainability across multiple venues-Evidence from the crosscult H2020 project

Sustainability in Cultural Heritage (CH) is a complex question that needs to be addressed by a group of experts tackling the different issues. In this light, the present work wishes to provide a multi-level analysis of the sustainability in CH, using as an example a recent European H2020 project (CrossCult) and the lessons learnt from its design, implementation and evaluation. The sustainability of CH has qualitatively changed over the last few years, under the developments in digital technology that seems to affect the very nature of the cultural experience. We discuss sustainability in venues using digital technologies, covering a span of needs of small/unknown and large/popular venues, which try to enhance the visitor experience, attract visitors, form venue networks, etc. Moreover, we explore issues of sustainability of digital content and its re usability through holistic design. Aspects of technology, human networks and data sustainability are also presented, and we conclude with the arguments concerning the sustainability of visitor reflection, the interpretation of social and historical phenomena and the creation of meaning.This research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 693150. The authors from the University of Vigo got further support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Galician Regional Government under agreement for funding the AtlantTIC Research Center for Information and Communication Technologies, as well as the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Gobierno de España) research project TIN2017-87604-R

CrossCult D2.4 Refined digital cultural resource data & data structure

This report presents the CrossCult digital datasets of the four project pilots.It contains a description of the methods and data structures used to semantically model and ingest the digital resources of the pilots into the CrossCult Knowledge Base following the semantics of the CrossCult Upper-level ontology, a set of examples of semantic enrichment, information retrieval and association discovery among the pilots’ resources and other related information in the CrossCult Knowledge Base,and a brief description of how the pilots’ digital resources can be viewed and access through three different front-end application

CrossCult D2.5 Upper-level Cultural Heritage Ontology

This paper presents the Upper-level Ontology and the other ontological schemas and vocabularies that we used to model the semantics of the “world” of CrossCult and its four pilots. It consists of two documents: a report describing the rationale and structure of the ontology and a PDF file containing the definitions of the classes and properties of the CrossCult ontologies in the syntax of Description Logics

Technology-Powered Strategies to Rethink the Pedagogy of History and Cultural Heritage through Symmetries and Narratives

Recent advances in semantic web and deep learning technologies enable new means for the computational analysis of vast amounts of information from the field of digital humanities. We discuss how some of the techniques can be used to identify historical and cultural symmetries between different characters, locations, events or venues, and how these can be harnessed to develop new strategies to promote intercultural and cross-border aspects that support the teaching and learning of history and heritage. The strategies have been put to the test in the context of the European project CrossCult, revealing enormous potential to encourage curiosity to discover new information and increase retention of learned information

Technology-Powered Strategies to Rethink the Pedagogy of History and Cultural Heritage through Symmetries and Narratives

Recent advances in semantic web and deep learning technologies enable new means for the computational analysis of vast amounts of information from the field of digital humanities. We discuss how some of the techniques can be used to identify historical and cultural symmetries between different characters, locations, events or venues, and how these can be harnessed to develop new strategies to promote intercultural and cross-border aspects that support the teaching and learning of history and heritage. The strategies have been put to the test in the context of the European project CrossCult, revealing enormous potential to encourage curiosity to discover new information and increase retention of learned informatio