Games have become an integral part of today's culture, most obviously among younger people. At the same time, learning games have proved that they can be a source of enjoyment and are, if well-made, powerful tools for communicating knowledge. For cultural heritage projects targeted to raising the awareness of the general public, the integration of interactivity and innovative storytelling techniques can be supporting elements to capture their target audiences' enthusiasm. In particular, games that deal with art history have particular flaws in integrating motivating elements. This observation led us to the development of the 3D online learning game, ThIATRO, that immerses the player an exhibition and, as a side-effect communicates knowledge of art history concepts to the player. Its playful approach not only increases motivation to learn but also raises interest in art history and cultural heritage in general. We provide an overview of the design ideas behind ThIATRO and summarize the results of evaluations conducted with a group of 14-year-old pupils in a classroom environment. The results indicate that ThIATRO changes the player's aesthetic response and allows him or her to perceive art on a deeper level.
The ENVRI Reference Model (ENVRI RM) and its ontological representation Open Information Linking for Environmental RIs (OIL-E) allow architects and engineers to describe the architecture and operational behavior of environmental and earth science research infrastructures (RIs) in a standardized way using community-agreed terminology. RI descriptions can be published as linked data, allowing discovery, querying, and comparison using established Semantic Web technologies. The ENVRI Knowledge Base is a community knowledge base which uses OIL-E to capture information about environmental and earth science RIs in the ENVRI community for query and comparison. Such Knowledge-as-a-Service supports identifying the technologies and standards used for particular activities and services and evaluating research infrastructure subsystems and behaviors against certain criteria, such as compliance with the FAIR data principles.
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