Motiv-ARCHE: co-creation of augmented reality educational content to motivate cultural and natural heritage learning

In the past, sites such as museums or archaeological sites focused primarily on the preservation, maintenance, and conservation of heritage elements for present and future generations. However, they now face a new challenge, the lack of motivation and public engagement in visiting and creating content about the exhibited elements. This lack of interest is, since the content presented does not address the interests or needs of the visitors, leading to cognitive overload with irrelevant information. Therefore, various applications have shown that the use of immersive technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), along with content co-creation strategies and information adaptation, can enhance users’ motivation to visit these sites. Moreover, these technologies also contribute to the preservation and conservation of heritage through the creation of virtual content. This article describes the design and implementation of a system called Motiv-ARCHE for the co-creation of educational content about cultural and natural heritage using AR. Its name combines three key elements: Motiv, referring to the motivation for learning; AR, for the use of augmented reality; and CHE, because it focuses on the education of cultural and natural heritage. Motiv-ARCHE is a system that integrates immersive technologies, co-creation, and information adaptation to enhance motivation for learning about cultural and natural heritage. Moreover, it enables both experts and users to generate content without requiring advanced technical knowledge, and this content can be displayed through AR activation by image recognition and geographic location. The system also provides access to various media formats, such as audio, video, 3D models, and AR documents. Thanks to its design, which is oriented toward delivering adaptive services, it aims to provide the user with the information they need according to their characteristics and context, which could enrich their experience at heritage sites by considering both their individual characteristics and those of their context. This increases their motivation to visit these sites and to learn about the heritage they contain. The development of Motiv-ARCHE follows the Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology, an iterative approach divided into three phases: design, implementation, and analysis. In the design phases, the characteristics of Motiv-ARCHE are identified based on the literature and user feedback. During the implementation phases, the core functionalities are developed and some experiments are conducted focusing on the co-creation of heritage elements, content, and routes, as well as on access to this content and in the analysis phases, each experiment is evaluated to improve the system. The article describes three co-creation experiments with 48, 16 and 8 participants respectively and one access experiment with 44 participants. In the three co-creation experiments, the IMMS (Instructional Materials Motivation Survey) motivation test and a demographic questionnaire were applied, while in the access experiment, the IMMS motivation test, the ARAM (Augmented Reality Acceptance Model) technology acceptance test, an augmented reality activation questionnaire, and a demographic questionnaire were used. The results showed that, thanks to the use of the methodology in the first experiment and the feedback provided by users, the application progressively improved, achieving better results in subsequent experiments. Furthermore, it was found that users feel motivated both in the co-creation of heritage elements, content, and routes, and in accessing content through AR.