Keywords

1 Introduction

There are many new learning materials that use ICT now. Digital texts can show pictures and videos to students with sounds. Some texts involve augmented reality as well [1]. This material is easy to understand for young students, who, from the viewpoint of developmental psychology, still think in concrete terms. Such interesting material makes it seem as if they understand the topic well. However, sometimes, this material is not sufficient for understanding the topic. Using the Internet and convenient tools on a PC, students write and create their reports. However, they do not remember the contents of the course after the class. The complete topic is presented them and they have little chance to think further about the topic inside their heads. The old texts, written using only words, forced students to imagine some elements in their brains in order to understand the topic. Nowadays, students often do not need to be active to understand some new topics. They become so passive that they do not try to imagine any lacking elements.

This tendency makes young students not very active in their travel as well. They visit traditional places and look for the convenience stores that they always go to in their daily lives. Basic social research by the Statistics Bureau in the Ministry of Public Management Home Affairs Posts and Telecommunications in Japan found that the number of young tourists from 15 to 20 years of age as well as those in their 20s and 30s has decreased greatly from 1986 to 2011 [2].

For example, young students in elementary and junior high school in Tokyo used to visit Nikko for their school trips in order to learn the traditions and culture of the old periods. However, according to our research in 2014 (n = 171), many of them did not wish to visit there again when they grew up. Some of them answered that they already knew about Nikko, even though they had visited Nikko by bus and looked at a few famous sights for a short time [3].

We have been studying how such students can begin to learn actively using ICT. We created an application so that they can understand the real world more deeply using smartphones in Nikko. A smartphone is a suitable device for bringing learning material outdoors. Therefore, using a smartphone in the area, students may be more affected when looking at real objects. A smartphone is a tool that can connect an undiscovered real world and their ordinary lives.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 examines related work. Sections 3 and 4 describe our application using Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacon and explain the results of experiments. Finally, in the conclusion section, we discuss the importance of outdoor study for young students for traditional cultural sites using the smartphone application.

2 Related Work

2.1 Sightseeing Application

Many sightseeing applications exist in Japan that allow tourists to access information about restaurants, souvenir shops, and the local weather as well as to download maps. Augmented reality combines the virtual world with the real world [4]. In addition, a large amount of information has made it possible to make sightseeing location recommendations. The system searches for some locations related to the user’s favorites on the basis of some similarity measures [5].

The European Union’s TAG CLOUD project (Technologies lead to Adaptability and lifelong engagement with culture throughout the CLOUD) uses smartphone technology to provide information about traditional cultural sites [6]. While TAG CLOUD uses a cloud-based service, our application is designed to work without requiring access to the cloud, since Internet connections may be limited in rural areas.

2.2 BLE Beacons

The global BLE beacon market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 307.2% from 2015–2020. About 80,000 units were shipped in 2015, and this number is expected to quickly grow to 88.29 million units by 2020 [7]. A new business called Beacon Bank uses beacons that having already been established and is based on a beacon sharing system [8]. BLE beacons are mainly used for indoor location-based services to indicate locations and display information for education scenes. For example, attendance confirmation [9] and information systems in museums [10] are popular. In addition, a BLE beacon library reference system is available at the Sabae Library in Japan [11]. However, we seldom find use cases of BLE beacons for outdoor studying.

2.3 Our Previous Work on School Trips

In 2011, 94% of junior high school students and 97.1% of high school students went on several-day school trips in Japan [12]. While such outdoor activities are valuable, students cannot fully grasp the artistic or cultural value and meaning of the objects or scenery by simply viewing them [13]. To solve this problem, we have developed a learning model for outdoor study [14,15,16,17].

Human beings do not always recognize what they are seeing. However, once a particular object is noticed, their attention tends to focus on it. We exploited this concept and developed quiz applications to be used as a trigger to draw attention to a particular object in the scenery that the students were viewing. The quizzes encouraged positive responses. Using the quiz, we encouraged students to notice what they did not understand well and students looked forward to seeing the objects in person in the area.

3 Our Application Using BLE Beacons

3.1 Purpose of the Project

The purpose of this project was to offer local traditional information for an area and interest students in it. In Nikko, some shops have continued for seven generations and one has continued for eight generations. These shop owners live according to the traditional Japanese ways. If they have a chance to tell about their traditional ways of living in a cultural site, students will be interested in them. Tourists who are unaware of the area use an SNS, which offers some information about the area now. Therefore, local seasonal or traditional information is often buried among the numerous photographs and comments left by visitors unfamiliar with the location. Young people have little chance to learn about the effects of traditional ways on daily life.

3.2 New Application Design

We chose BLE beacons in order to create a new application for school trips. We use BLE Beacons (Fig. 1) on the school trip for the following reasons.

Fig. 1.
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Beacons (left) on the roadside and (right) with a solar battery

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  • Protection of the environment in the cultural heritage site:

    The world heritage sites have rules to maintain the landscape. Signboards would adversely affect it. Using a smartphone screen as a kind of a personal signboard, we can leave the area unchanged.

  • Location serviced and protection of individual privacy:

    The location of students is necessary for teachers. However, such information has to be protected from the viewpoint of security. Using beacons, teachers can know the student locations and timestamps and without needing the data to be sent to the cloud. This system is based on local communication.

  • Local and seasonal information:

    Near field communication by Bluetooth provides information at the exact place and time in Nikko. Students can feel the immediacy of this information and will connect with the real place and real season via their smartphones.

  • Information of the people living the area:

    The owners of shops on the route install information in the black beacon boxes. Beacons on the poles become a trigger to connect with applications for them. Some tangible signs are useful for prompting a human to perform some action.

  • Multi-object use:

    A beacon is an object that can have multiple uses. We present not only messages about traditional places when tourists pass near the beacon, but also seasonal information using push-based information when tourists pass by this application at the station. We install the beacons on local poles. In addition, one member of staff wore a beacon like a watch so that students could find him. The staff then gave students a quiz. A beacon is so small that we can apply it in many scenarios. For example, a lucky dip implemented by a beacon could entertain young students.

    This diversity makes this system a sustainable service. Students have little money and stay in Nikko for only one day or a half day. If this system were useful only for students, it would be difficult to keep it in the area even though it is convenient and interesting. However, if it is useful for people living the area or other tourists in Nikko, it will be continued.

3.3 Design of Our Application

We placed beacons to send short pieces of information about the area to tourists on foot en route to the main shrine in order to create a new traditional road to the main shrine, Toshogu, in Nikko. It was a necessary effort for pilgrims to walk up the road in past times. There are several little temples and springs on the way to the main shrine, and visitors must travel uphill to visit the Toshogu shrine. The beacons were fitted on lamp posts 100 m apart from each other. Many of the beacons are clustered near Shinkyo Bridge (Fig. 2). Beacons broadcast messages using three channels: 37, 38, and 39, at fixed intervals between 10.24 and 20 s. An important characteristic of BLE is its low power consumption. BLE requires a tenth to a hundredth the power of classic Bluetooth signalling, and a beacon may function for one year or more without a battery change. BLE also requires less power than Wi-Fi. This is the reason we decided to use the BLE beacon for sightseeing, especially for outdoor sightseeing. Figure 3 shows the use case of this application.

Fig. 2.
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Beaconmap in Nikko

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Fig. 3.
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Usecase of this application

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Figure 4 shows some screen shots (the pages of a quiz function) of our application, which is called “Nikkonavi.” Figure 4 is a quiz about a sculpture under a temple roof. Immediately before students arrive at the old building, they receive a beacon signal and answer the quiz. Then they go to the temple and confirm the sculpture while looking at the real object. Our quiz courses use the Zeigarnik effect [18], which is a psychological effect in which we, as human beings, remember better an unfinished event or an incomplete one. If students answer a quiz, they might keep thinking about it until they look at the object, that is, the answer of the quiz, near the BLE beacon. Further, teachers can see the locations of their students.

Fig. 4.
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Screenshotsof the quiz function

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This application includes a stamp rally in the shopping street, navigation, and bus timetables. Figure 5 shows our service flow. Shop owners can see the customer traffic diagram. We have to consider the merits of the application for people living in Nikko. If we incorporate no advantages for them, the information becomes hollow, and world heritage site becomes an ancient ruin. There are people in Nikko, and they live according to traditional customs even now. They know a large amount of seasonal information about Japanese culture. Their lives create a living stage, and if students learn and feel such living traditional culture, they will maintain an interest in the place. The tangible buildings make students feel as if the architecture is all they have to learn. However, if they catch a glimpse of the spirit of the place, they can hope to understand the place more after their trip. The beacons permit many-sided functions and helps students to appreciate the other people living there or indeed other tourists.

Fig. 5.
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Service flow

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We improved and designed our application with several buttons for several targets: students, foreign tourists, young tourists, and shop owners. Such holistic experiences make the trip come alive. This is an important aspect of the application because we have to preserve not only the buildings of world heritage sites but also its culture for the next generation.

4 Experiments and Results

We performed two experiments to validate the efficacy of our application. One experiment concerns students and the other concerns tourists.

4.1 Quiz Function for Students

In this experiment, 28 students participated in the trial, in which 23 students were required to complete 10 quizzes on the streets and five students walked around without the application for comparison on 26 September 2015. Before looking at some important objects, students were provided with quizzes on the nearby locality, which they answered by viewing objects at the sites. Figure 6 shows an example quiz.

Fig. 6.
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Example quiz function

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Before and after the experiments, students answered questionnaires. Memory is thought to be largely visual [19]. Therefore, besides answering the questionnaires, students were also requested to draw a map and check some points on the map of the area [20]. Application users drew maps that were more concrete than those of the five students not provided with the application. On average, the application users placed 9.18 objects on the map from the station to the shrine, whereas the non-application participants placed an average of 5.80 objects. The application users tended to remember not only the answers to the quizzes but also the shops around the beacons where they answered the quizzes.

In addition, the maps students drew tended to have certain characteristics. The first area after they arrived at the station was larger than other areas. Figure 7 presents some examples. This effect is considered to be a primacy effect, that is, human beings tend to remember better or more easily the first items of a series [21].

Fig. 7.
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Maps from the station to the main shrine after the experiment

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After one month, the same students answered another questionnaire and checked three points in each photograph of the area they walked in Nikko. We constructed heat maps from the students’ checks and the results indicate that they remembered the quiz points after a month. After two months, the students answered the same questionnaire presented before the experiments. The results of our experiments show high evaluations. The students remembered the cultural objects well. In addition, they remembered several shops along the route, and 75% of them hoped to visit there again. Some commented that they had little time to look around the area and hoped to visit Nikko again.

We also analyzed their evaluation of Nikko. There were three clusters. They visited Nikko with high expectations and then, after two months, their evaluation of many subjects was lower than before. However, all of them valued the history and culture in Nikko higher. The students who evaluated the quizzes and maps belonged to cluster 3. They valued several subjects as higher than before (Table 1).

Table 1. Evaluation of our application before and after the experiment (5-point Likert Scale)
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4.2 Navigation and Shop Information for Tourists (Web Questionnaires)

The sample size for this experiment was 80 tourists (60 Japanese and 20 English-speaking tourists). Nikkonavi is already published and tourists can use it. After using this application, some tourists answered Web questionnaires voluntarily. The impression of our application is “pleasant” and “helpful” for foreigners (Fig. 8). Foreigners and young people who were not familiar with Nikko evaluated the application highly. Of the tourists, 49% of them were visiting Nikko for the first time. Further, 67 tourists looked at our map: 90% of English-speaking users looked at map and 94% of them (17/18) answered that the map was useful. In addition, 38 users looked at the beacon stamps. These stamps were set with some coupons or points, but they were not functioning at that point. Therefore, this function was not useful, but many users paid attention to it. Finally, 14 users did not perceive the sound beacon at all, which is a problem that must be addressed (Fig. 9).

Fig. 8.
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Impression of the application

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Fig. 9.
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Beacon stamps

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4.3 Regional Differences in the Evaluation About Tourism in Nikko

We performed another study in Kobe (n = 80), which is in the Kansai area of Japan and is far from Tokyo. Students in Kobe seldom visit Nikko on their school trips. The questionnaires were the same as before. We compared students in Kobe with students in Tokyo (n = 53). The research objective was to understand users’ regional differences. Students in Kobe evaluated Nikko higher than students in Tokyo. Many students in Tokyo had been to Nikko on school trips that lasted a few days. However, they sometimes did not have good impressions of Nikko.

Comparing Tokyo with Kobe (on average), students in Tokyo had higher expectations about “Nature,” “History,” and “Hot springs.” Students from Kobe expected “Shopping,” “Nightspots,” “Traffic convenience,” “Easy reservations,” “Commodity prices” and other topics to be higher than the students from Tokyo (Fig. 10). Calculation of a t-test confirmed that there were significant correlations for “Night spot,” “Shopping,” “Easy reservation,” and “Commodity price” between Tokyo and Kobe (α significance level = 0.05). Specifically, the t-test result for “Night spots” obtained a significance probability (two-sided) of 0.003.

Fig. 10.
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Expectations about Nikko (5-point Likert Scale)

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We believe this can be explained as follows. The students from Kobe belonged to Kobegakuin University [22], and its campus is in the city center of Kobe. The night spots are very beautiful in Kobe. In contrast, most of the students in Tokyo belonged to Chuo University (Tama Campus) [23]. Tama campus is located in the suburbs in Tokyo, near the mountains.

The purpose of this study was to define the construct of novelty in the context of tourism [24, 25]. However, the results of our research indicate that students tend to wish for elements in their daily lives. In addition, the students who had been to Nikko on a school trip had lower expectations of the hotels than the others (P = 0.045).

5 Conclusion

5.1 Evaluation of the BLE Beacon: Applications for Sightseeing on School Trips

The evaluation of the BLE beacon application was high, not only for students but also for foreign tourists in Nikko. Students remembered the traditional objects and evaluated the history and culture higher after they visited Nikko. Shop owners have cooperated with us and were prepared to input seasonal and traditional information using this application. Staff in the tourism association use the bus timetables of this application in order to answer inquiries from tourists. Students, tourists, and people in the area have begun to use our application.

We still need to determine how people more people can become aware of the beacon signals and improve the application.

5.2 Inheriting the Culture of World Heritage Sites

Nikko is one of Japan’s world heritage sites. It is important for such areas to pass on their culture to younger generations. Not only people who know the area well but also young people should treat the area as a precious cultural resource. If students on school trips use our application and value the region highly, that would be helpful. However, it is not enough. It is important that young people living in the area actively maintain the traditional cultural sites. We requested high school students in Tochigi (some living in Nikko and others living nearby) to walk with our application. They answered the quizzes well. They enjoyed this application and evaluated it more highly than the students in Tokyo. In addition, they gathered information around Nikko Station. We set BLE beacons at about 100 m intervals. However, according the results of our research, the area in front of the station has big impact because of its primary effect (Fig. 7). We hence should to reinforce the information around the station. The junior high school students collected information on 8 February 2017. We will install this information in our application. Such corroboration will encourage the junior high school students living near Nikko to inherit the Nikko area.

5.3 Experiencing Cultural Sites

According to our research, students tended to wish for elements in their daily lives during travel. The characteristic points of traditional cultural areas are different from their daily feelings. Therefore, a smartphone application, which belongs to their daily lives, will be useful for connecting old traditional places with young people.

An application using BLE beacons provideslocal information and connects young and old, from the past to the future. This application has now been modified for Senganen Park for use in Kagoshima, a world industrial heritage site in Japan. In addition, we are now starting to use BLE beacons to support trekking in Senjogahara. In this case, beacons have their own solar power source so that they may be placed in nature without maintenance.