## 1 Introduction
### Goals  
The present work evaluates if VR and AR technologies can be used to enhance the didactic experience of technological heritage university museums. There are two issues that are distinctive in these kinds of museums. First, they are university museums in which the pedagogical role is even more relevant than in other kinds of museums. Second, as technological museums, they show different kinds of devices and technological artifacts. In many cases, it is not possible to demonstrate how these artifacts worked without damaging them. However, using VR/AR technology it is possible to provide additional information in the form of images, videos, and animations about how the artifacts were used. VR/AR technology has great potential to contribute to the pedagogical experience while preserving the artifacts undamaged.  
In order to assess the contribution of AR-based technological enhancements during these visits, it is necessary to compare the user experience during the AR-based visit with the traditional one. However, previous research that compared traditional visits with AR-based visits is scarce and only a few studies report these kinds of comparisons [12; 35; 40]. The present work will compare the traditional visit with the AR-based one, which will contribute to a better understanding of the relevance of using AR in a museum visit.  
Taking all these factors into account, the research questions (RQ) of the present study were determined:  
RQ1: Do the visitors to a technological heritage university museum have a better learning experience if AR is used to enhance the visit?  
RQ2: Do the visitors to a technological heritage university museum have a higher level of satisfaction during the visit if AR is used to enhance it?  
In order to answer those questions, different goals must be achieved in the present study.  
The first goal is to design and develop an AR-based system that can be used during the visit to this technological university museum and provide additional information about the technological artifacts that are shown in the exhibition, using different formats such as images, videos, or animations.  
The second goal is to design and develop a VR-based system that allows for a virtual visit to the museum. This application will not be included in the physical visit, because it was conceived as an additional way to visit the museum exhibition from other places, and not as a substitute or an improvement of the traditional visit. It can be used to give more diffusion to the contents of the museum and to reinforce its didactic task, as any person can have this experience from their home or revisit it after having experienced the physical visit. However, it will not be evaluated in the current study because only the effects of the technological enhancements in the physical visit will be evaluated. VR and AR applications are independent, but VR standalone application includes all the AR content. So during the virtual tour, users can execute the AR in a similar way that the user can in the real world visit.  
Finally, the third goal is to evaluate the visitors' experience using the AR-based system in comparison with the visitors' experience during the traditional visit, focusing especially on their satisfaction during the visit and their learning experience. This evaluation will be performed in a group of high school students, as long as this group is the most common kind of visitor that comes to this technological museum.