Virtual Guide as a Means of a Tailored Tour of an Educational Exhibition

摘要

In past few years, the process of lifelong learning has become more important. A tour of an educational exposition is an interesting and attractive activity for a person undergoing education. A museum, art gallery, zoological or botanical garden or even a technological park, all these can be perceived as an educational exhibition. When we desire to tour such an exposition in the most educationally beneficial way, we can ask'a guide to prepare a tailored tour according to our needs, such as depth of our interests, purpose for our tour or other provided information. There are various approaches and models for creating a tailored tour of a museum exposition. The simplest is to take advantage of a guide's services. Such a guide can even be a virtual one and can lead us through the exposition with the help of ICT equipment. This paper describes a model of such a virtual guide. Based on an initial analysis of a visitor, the virtual guide proposes a tour through the exposition so that it brings the visitor the maximal educational benefit while at the same time offers information about the displayed exhibits in such a way that is most interesting and comprehensible. The whole system consists of three modules: Visitor Module - an expert system to diagnose the visitor; Exhibit Module - a database of exhibits; Guide Module - an expert system that creates the tour, chooses and offers information about exhibits (and/or about the whole exhibition) to an individual visitor. The aim of the virtual guide is to work in the environment of the actual physical exposition. At first though, it is better to test the whole system in the environment of an online virtual museum. The testing concerns not only the functionality of the system but also the educational contribution of such a guide.