Kunsthal Museum Virus

Museum virus: An educational game

Museum virus is an educational game for children (10-14 years old), developed by Clementina Gentile as part of her graduation internship at NorthernLight. The game presents four different virus profiles. The children are encouraged to identify themselves with one of the viruses, based on their learning style. The aim of the game is to hack the system of the exhibition to discover secret information.

The preparation

The game is divided into three phases: preparation, hacking and an interactive story. The preparation phase takes place in the classroom. During this stage the children are put into groups  using an online game based on virus profiles. The game is accessed using the interactive white board.

Hacking

The “hacking session” takes place in the museum where the children a divided into their groups. Each virus group receives a booklet with a set of ten questions and a pair of decoding glasses. The questions must be decoded with the coloured glasses.

Each of the four groups receives a different set of questions, tailored to the learning style of the children in the group. However, exploratory learning features in each question set as the children have to look for hints, spread all over the exhibition, to help them answer the questions. The hints then need to be decoded using the coloured glasses.

Once the questions have all been answered correctly, the answers form a secret code. This code enables the children to access the third and last part of the game.

Complete the story

The interactive story takes place back at school. The children use the online white board once again to access the online game. Using the information they have gathered in the exhibition, the children complete an interactive story by dragging and dropping the correct words into the broken text on the screen. Once the story is complete, the illustrations become animated. This process allows the children to reflect upon what they have learnt in the museum.

Bridge the gap

Museum virus was designed to bridge the gap between standard education and less traditional learning mediums such as online communities, interactive games and social networks. The experience is based upon several learning principles including peer-to-peer learning, interest related groups and reward in terms of status.

Scope

Graduation project, concept development, detailed design, programming (Peter Remmerswaal)

Impact

The project was featured in Onderwijsblad magazine in October 2011 (Article – Dutch). It is currently being used as the educational programme of Kunsthal for their Mummies! exhibition.