# 3D Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage Sites as an Educational Approach. The Sanctuary of Delphi
###### Abstract
Many times, these applications aim to help users understand their original form, but again the emphasis is mainly on the projection of the material and, to a much lesser extent, on the accompanying context [21]. Virtual characters often are added to the digital environment to add to the virtual environment as tutor and apprentice, daily life or rituals and historical events. This helps to simulate to the nearest reality the constructed learning output and a better understanding of the cultural elements of the virtual environment [22]. The potential applications of this technology are considerable. A variety of applications are already in progress, including education and training, therapy, marketing, and entertainment [23]. Despite the widely recognized capabilities of interactive 3D graphics and virtual environments in archaeology, the use of these tools in educational environments is still limited, while it is overused in other environments [24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29]. In the field of Archaeology, regarding university students' education, it turned out that there is no corresponding progress and most students have not used any education software during their studies. Undoubtedly, inhibitory factors are the costs to universities and processes of purchasing software. However, solutions must be found to enable students to use software for their education as well. We have noted in our courses (but in other global universities too) a gap in the knowledge base of courses of history and archaeology. The theoretical presentations, even including PowerPoint presentations are not efficient. The issue that necessitated the study is explained from the lack of knowledge of archaeology students to deal with the sine qua non digital tools which form part of the archaeological sciences interdisciplinary field and the lack of instrumentation on their departments. The theoretical learning framework with which we are working has simple descriptions of archaeological sites without an interactive procedure which strengthens the experiencing action with the help of virtual techniques. Within this frame and data, we introduce high school students with the digital terminology to the use of this ICT from home desk PCs. The issue of learning from books and/or narratively in the classroom needs to be overcome and students need to tuned with modern information technology which has become part of everyday occupation; value should be assigned to this virtual tool applied to learning the environment and getting the sense of being there which is the objective of the presented application concept. The triggering of our study came from the concerns regarding the laboratory learning techniques for archaeology science-based higher education students. The focus of this work is on the adoption of interactive 3D environments and game-based approaches to support the study of archeology and their effect on a formal curriculum. We have developed a prototype environment that integrates digitized 3D landscape, buildings and monuments from the Sanctuary of Delphi in a playful educational 3D environment following historical and environmental data. The virtual environment aims to educate archeology students through exploration and study of the archaeological site. This research project has been inspired and designed to provide a substantial contribution on an international scale to Virtual Archaeometry and Cyber-Archaeometry [30; 31]. Furthermore, we have set up an exploratory study, where we inspect the use of this prototype by Archaeology students in order to assess its usability and efficiency and to shed more light on the stance of students on the introduction of new technologies in classical sciences. The present work exhibits the effectiveness of an interactive virtual environment for learning the cultural heritage through the reconstruction of the sanctuary of Delphi. Some examples of the related work of serious gaming in cultural heritage include [PERSON] et al. (2012) [32] and [PERSON] et al. (2014) [33].