NEW MODDED MINECRAFT VIRTUAL MUSEUM MODEL: AN EARLY VERSION OF THE TRIASSIC EXPEDITION MUSEUM

Despite deep time and geologic time periods being key concepts in many natural sciences, studies show that youth aging from young children to undergraduates hold misconceptions about Earth’s history. These include the timing and chronology of geologic events, the merging of geologic events such as the extinction of dinosaurs with the onset of the most recent Ice Age, and the rate of processes like landscape formation. Competency in the concept of deep time is necessary to understand the current climatic crisis Earth is facing, so it is important to get the youth engaged in geoscience (Dodick & Orion, 2003; Czajka & McConnell, 2018). Virtual museums with gamified aspects are being used as learning tools for all ages, as gamification has been shown to create engaging and memorable experiences making the learning process more enjoyable ( Charr, 2019; López-Martínez et al., 2020). Examples of gamified virtual museums include the Sternberg Museum Metaverse on Gather Town that has exhibits and interactive worlds, an archaeology museum created by De Paolis L. et. al. (2022) that has guests perform the burial rites of the Ostuni woman, an archaeological museum designed by Kyriakou P. and Hermon S. (2012) allows visitors to pick up and rotate 3D models of archaeological artifacts in order to compare them. None of the Minecraft virtual museums that have been published appear to use mods, which are independently programmed modifications that add new content to the game. After finding a Minecraft mod centered around prehistoric life and geologic time periods, the author is addressing the gap in deep time education by creating a modded Minecraft museum. The first iteration of the virtual museum seeks to introduce users to the concept of deep time by focusing on the aspect of evolution,by building a museum in a modded version of Minecraft that centers around the Triassic Period, pairing enclosures of prehistoric taxa next to enclosures of modern taxa and comparing their morphology and ecology. Players use a portal to go back in time to the Triassic to collect prehistoric animals for the museum. The goal of the virtual museum is to help players better understand deep time by having them explore prehistoric environments and compare extinct taxa to extant ones. The virtual museum uses a suite of 37 mods.. The enclosures for each animal mimic the habitats they are found in, taking climate and plant life into mind.