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The purpose of this paper is to develop a blended mobile game-based learning service called CoboChild Mobile Exploration Service (hereinafter CoboChild) to support children’s learning in an environment blending virtual game worlds and a museum’s physical space. The contextual model of learning (CML) was applied to consider the related influential factors affecting museum learning and to promote children’s continuous learning and revisit motivations.

CoboChild provides a thematic game-based learning environment to facilitate children’s interactions with exhibits and other visitors. A practical system has been implemented in the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS), Taiwan. A questionnaire was used to examine whether CoboChild can effectively fulfill the CML and to evaluate the impacts on museum learning.

CoboChild effectively fulfilled the CML to facilitate children’s interactive experiences and re-visit motivations in the blended mobile game-based learning environment. Most children described the system as providing fruitful playfulness while improving their interpretations of exhibitions and learning experiences.

CoboChild considers the related contextual influences on the effective support of children’s learning in a museum, and builds a child-centered museum learning environment with highly integrated blended learning resources for children. CoboChild has been successfully operating in the NMNS since 2011.

This study developed a blended mobile game-based learning service to effectively support children’s learning in museum contexts. The related issues are shown to improve the design of blended museum learning services. This innovative approach can be applied to the design of other child-centered services for engaging children’s interactive experiences in museums.

This paper aims to propose an online and on-site cyclical learning model (OOCLM). It considers how combining digital applications can promote a museum’s virtuous learning cycle between online and on-site spaces for children.

A practical cyclical learning service has been successfully implemented in a science museum in Taiwan. This provides a thematic game-based learning environment, allowing all the children to create their unique museum experiences before, during and after their visit. A questionnaire was developed to examine the children’s perceptions of the OOCLM to ascertain whether they were satisfied with the pre-visit, on-site visit and post-visit services offered.

The learning model considered the contextual factors that influence digital applications in museums. The digital and physical resources are well integrated, and the museum’s online and on-site services are linked to effectively promote children’s cyclical learning.

The results show that most of the children highly appreciated the learning model. The model presents an interactive learning environment for children’s cyclical learning and repeat visits.

The OOCLM considers the related contextual influences of digital applications in museum learning; it effectively bridges the museum’s online and on-site services to promote the museum’s virtuous learning cycle and long-term museum learning resource management. This study provides a benchmark example to develop sustainable cyclical learning services for target visitor groups and to motivate their long-term interaction with the museum.

This study develops a universal game-based blended museum learning service (UGBMLS) to engage museum visitors of different ages and promote their return visits. This study aims to provide a single service with flexible learning content matching the diverse needs and preferences for different ages. The contextual influences are considered to promote participatory experiences and meaningful social interactions. An experiment is conducted herein to understand how visitors of different ages experience the museum's services as well as to address the design issues in aiming to satisfy the different age groups' needs.

A UGBMLS, which includes a real-world adventure game system with flexible learning content and various types of learning support, was provided for different age groups. To investigate how the visitors of different ages evaluate their experiences with the UGBMLS, a mixed-method study was conducted. In total, two questionnaires were employed to examine the visitors' museum experiences and subjective measurements of cognitive load. In addition, observation and group interviews were used to explain the quantitative results.

The results show that the UGBMLS can engage diverse visitors of different ages in museum visits and promote their revisit motivations. However, there are significant differences among different age groups. The design issues in seeking to satisfy the diverse needs of different age groups are noted.

This study provides a feasible and cost-effective approach to support diverse visitors of different ages learning in museums.

This study provides an effective solution for engaging diverse visitors of different ages with a unified service. The results can be used to better understand the needs of different age groups and to effectively improve their museum experiences, thereby boosting their motivation regarding return visits. This study provides a feasible and cost-effective approach to support diverse visitors' learning in museums.

This paper aims to develop a curriculum-based virtual and physical mobile (CVPM) learning model, which integrates related physical and e-learning resources associated with elementary school curricula and supports elementary education.

This model provides a highly participative and well-monitored environment with fruitful interactions among students, teachers and museum staff. A practical system was implemented in the National Museum of Natural Science in Taiwan.

The results show that the proposed model can effectively extend related learning resources to satisfy the requirements of elementary education. In addition, this model can engage students’ self-directed explorations through problem-solving learning content during the learning process.

This learning model was implemented in a one-day theme-based learning activity. Generic learning outcomes and qualitative analysis were used to examine the students’ perceptions and the teachers’ feedback of this learning model, respectively.

The results show that both students and teachers highly appreciated this learning model. The model not only strengthens the connection between museum and elementary curricula but also enhances students’ perceptions and positive attitudes toward natural science courses. Finally, this study offers suggestions for future research.

This study develops a CVPM learning model which integrates elementary school courses to satisfy the requirements of elementary education and meet museums’ educational strategies for schools. The practical learning system and services have been successfully implemented and are widely available to elementary schools in Taiwan.

The purpose of this study is to propose a knowledge‐based mobile learning framework that integrates various types of museum‐wide content, and supports ubiquitous, context‐aware, personalized learning for museums.

A unified knowledge base with multi‐layer reusable content structures serves as the kernel component to integrate content from exhibitions for education and collection in a museum. The How‐Net approach is adopted to build a unified natural and cultural ontology. The ontology functions as a common and sharable knowledge concept that denotes each knowledge element in the unified knowledge base, and associates each learner's learning context and usage with a content and usage profile respectively. Data mining algorithms, e.g. association mining and clustering, are applied to discover useful patterns for ubiquitous personalization from these content and usage profiles.

A pilot project based on the proposed framework has been successfully implemented in the Life Science Hall of the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS), Taiwan, demonstrating the feasibility of this framework.

This study proposes a mobile learning framework that can be replicated in many museums. This framework improves learners' learning experiences with rich related content, and with ubiquitous, proactive and adaptive services. Museums can also benefit from implementing this framework through outreach services for educational, promoting and usability needs from combining mobile and Internet communication technologies and learning services.

The purpose of this study is to describe a framework of ontological techniques to restrengthen current content management systems of a natural science museum. The ontological approach is utilized to extend the service level from information to knowledge.

Two ontologies have been established to perform vascular plant and herbal drug knowledge bases that further facilitate knowledge integration and inference. Furthermore, this study presented ontology development processes, including knowledge acquisition, representation, and retrieval.

Empirical lessons related to development techniques are concluded as follows: first, the formal concept analysis can be used as a knowledge acquisition approach to acquire concepts and attributes from expertise. Second, the Ontology Web Language represents an XML‐based language which provides formal logic expressions for describing knowledge concepts. Finally, the Jena APIs can be further developed as an ontology reasoner to facilitate knowledge inference and retrieval.

The development of ontological knowledge base is time‐consuming and requires seamless collaboration among specialists, knowledge engineers, and information systems.

Empirical lessons indicate that ontological techniques provide potential approaches for library and museum communities to apply for next generation knowledge building.

This study indicates that ontological techniques have excellent potential for knowledge building.

This paper sets out to present a new model to avoid the content silo trap, satisfy the knowledge management requirement and support the long‐term perspective of developing academic, exhibition, and education applications among various domains for museums.

This paper presents a unified knowledge‐based content management (UKCM) model, which comprises the unified knowledge content processes, multi‐layer reusable knowledge content structures and an integrated knowledge‐based content management system to solve the content silo trap problem. The extended entity‐relationship (EER) conceptual model is applied to design a global view of the integrated knowledge system and completely represent multi‐layer reusable knowledge content structures for the spectrum of various knowledge assets for all domains and applications in a museum.

A practical case of a large‐scale digital archives project that includes various domains of a natural science museum has been successfully implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model.

This paper integrates content management and knowledge management. Digital archives programs in museums can apply the model presented in this study to satisfy the knowledge management requirement and support the long‐term perspective of developing academic, exhibition, and education applications among various domains.