Pre-Service History Teacher’s Opinions About the Use of Virtual Museum Applications in History Courses

The opportunities offered by technology are used in educational processes to make education more qualified. One of the technology-based applications is virtual museums. Virtual museums make important contributions to bringing the works of art in museums to the classroom environment and making the lesson more concrete and understandable. Especially considering the exhibition of the past, virtual museums could be used for history courses but more research needs to be done on the subject. This study aimed at exploring pre-service history teachers' opinions and experiences about virtual museum applications. The research was conducted via qualitative research approach and phenomenology design in line with the nature of this approach. The study group of the research consists of 15, 3rd grade teacher candidates studying in Department of History Teaching at Marmara University Atatürk Education Faculty in 2020-2021 academic year. The data was collected via semi-structured interview form and analysed using the content analysis method. Considering the results obtained, it was reported that the participants responded considering the pandemic conditions, they regarded technology as a way to facilitate the learning-teaching processes of history courses and stated that virtual museum applications would contribute to history courses.