Virtual Currency as Gamification for Learning in a Disaster Museum to Increase the Number of Revisitors

Abstract

Disaster education plays an important role in protecting our lives and information, and communication technology-based disaster education (ICTDE) has received much attention. We focus on virtual currency as gamification to enable visitors to learn about disasters more deeply while having fun at a disaster museum that serves as a central facility for disaster education; accordingly, visitors can be motivated to revisit the museum. In our gamified ICTDE program, “Knowledgeonaire.” visitors can take quizzes while observing exhibits and obtain VC as a reward when they provide correct answers. In addition, visitors will think about how to make effective use of their VC when receiving VC, buying hints, and buying gifts. We developed a web-based Knowledgeonaire system (K-System), which has a simple mechanism of quiz presentation using near field communication (NFC). Through a preliminary comparative experiment, we discovered that K-System did not perform better than a non-Knowledgeonaire system (NFC-based simple quiz presentation system), but can motivate visitors to revisit the museum.