My museum: A study of pre-service social studies teachers’ experience in designing virtual museums

Abstract This study aims to reveal pre-service teachers’ experience in virtual museum design that they can use in social studies teaching, and their opinions on virtual museum applications. In line with this purpose, phenomenology design was used as one of the qualitative research approaches. Selected by the criterion sampling method, the study sample consisted of a total of 15 pre-service social studies teachers (9 female, 6 male) who were studying in year 4 at the Department of Social Studies Education of a State University in the 2021/22 academic year. During the 9-week virtual museum design process, virtual museums on “epidemics, women’s rights, population, environmental problems, climate, human rights, and migration” were designed through the Artsteps application. The study was executed in a dynamic manner in co-operation and interaction with pre-service teachers based on the principles of design, implementation and evaluation. A semi-structured interview form was used as a data collection tool to determine the opinions of pre-service teachers about virtual museums and the use of virtual museums in social studies teaching. The data was analysed by content analysis. The results revealed that the virtual museum design process positively affected the views of pre-service teachers and that virtual museums are very effective and applicable tools in social studies teaching. This study suggests that virtual museums be used in social studies courses since they offer rich content to achieve meaningful learning in social studies courses owing to easy accessibility, and that future studies focus on examining the effects of popularizing virtual museums designed with gamification and guided content.