Just as the Louvre and the British Museum do with their works of art, the idea is to present a series of relevant documents, whether works of art or not, on a given theme in a virtual space whose layout is similar to that of a museum.
A virtual museum is therefore a fictitious three-dimensional construction whose configuration is borrowed from video games or virtual reality.
This space is designed using a software such as Visitor, Framevr, Emaze or Cospaces, which have in common that they are accessible to all, from a technical point of view, while being user-friendly, intuitive and well-structured.
The virtual museum is made up of several sections containing different collections. Each collection comprises a main element and additional elements in different formats: images, sound, video and/or text.
The educational approaches to virtual museums are many and varied. The simplest is to offer learners an immersive experience in a virtual museum. Learners can then discover the different works at their own pace, free to linger wherever they like, following an itinerary that they themselves determine, while being able to search directly for additional information if they feel the need, without delaying the rest of the class.
At the other extreme, one way of using virtual museums in the classroom is to ask learners to create a virtual museum on a given theme from scratch, choosing not only its architecture (number of rooms per floor, size of rooms, for example) but also being responsible for the collections that will be presented (choosing the works, creating introductions and explanations, and even creating some of the exhibits themselves). We're going to take a closer look at this last option.