Click and learn! Re-using Europeana content to support learning activities

This article is by Nephelie Chatzidiakou, Scientific Associate at the Digital Curation Unit, Athena R.C.

Digital games are increasingly used for promoting learning and supporting cultural heritage engagement through playful activities. Games used for learning have a positive impact on educational efficiency and student motivation, as they encourage and improve engagement and resourcefulness.

In this context, DCU (Digital Curation Unit, Athena R.C.) recently participated in the Athens Science Festival with a thematic knowledge testing quiz developed in the context of the project ARK4.

ARK4 is a collaborative project between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Library and DCU, aiming to share knowledge through a series of online quizzes.

The Athens Science Festival took place in Athens between 5 and 10 April 2016. Although the Festival is a relatively new initiative, it is already established as one of the biggest celebrations of science and technology in Greece. Organized annually in the spring, the Athens Science Festival attracts tens of thousands of visitors, among them students, researchers and teachers.

As most of the visitors of the Festival are young people, DCU designed the “Click and Learn! Europe and Me” quiz in the Greek language. This quiz is targeted to younger users, mainly between 6 and 15 years old, and challenges their knowledge about Europe, the European geography, peoples and traditions. Eleven multiple choice questions with different weighting factors were created.

The visual content of the quiz was derived entirely from the Europeana collections in an attempt to re-use Europeana material in a different context, while exposing young Greek users to high quality visual material from across Europe.

Altogether, we managed to gather 137 responses to the quizzes; the majority of the respondents was not older than 17 years old. According to the evaluation questions that accompanied the quizzes, all users liked the game and most of them felt they learned something new.

Intrigued? You can play too!

If you are comfortable with the Greek language, you can try the quiz here!

If not, you can still try the three English quizzes on Children’s Literature and the Lost Cultures created in the context of ARK4.

Following this link you can also find some pictures from the event!