Hanse 1380 - A Learning Game for the German Maritime Museum

In an one year lasting project at the University of Applied Sciences in Bremerhaven a digital learning game for the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven was developed. It is targeted to school pupils in the age between 10 and 14 and should explain the importance of the cog for trading activities between Hanse cities in the 14th century. More detailed learning objectives were defined through a survey with history teachers from Bremen. The historical research was done in cooperation with the museum. Another key-interest was the design and building of an easy-to-use and attractive computer terminal including a special control-interface for the game. The resulting game is evaluated in an user-test with 29 school pupil. It shows that the game makes fun and is easy to understand. Approx. 50% of the pupils achieved all learning objectives. 1 Game–based Learning in a Museum One part of the duty of a museum is to provide and transport information to the visitor1. Traditional museum exhibits show parts and aspects of the topic the museum or the particular exhibition is dealing with. The visitor has a passive role and no possibility to "respond". Interactive exhibits, in contrast, enable the visitor to participate and explore actively the information provided by the museum. The learning effect can increase with interactive exhibits in so far that exhibitions can be more "entertaining" [1] as well as "inspire and provoke exploration ... and to tempt people to look more thoughtfully at traditional museum displays" [2]. Anne Fahy described it like that [3, p. 89]: Interactive Devices have an active and important role to play in the communication process. This is emphasized by research carried out by the British Audio Visual Society which showed that whilst we only remember 10 per cent of what we read, we remember 90 per cent of what we say and do (Bayard-White 1991). 1 See the definition of a museum by ICOM: http://icom.museum/statutes.html\#3