A project-problem based learning approach for appreciating ancient cultural heritage through technologies: Realizing mystical buildings in Dunhuang Mural

This paper reports a project-problem based learning approach for motivating technically skilled students to learn and appreciate cultural heritage, a discipline which is unrelated to their own majors. A group of undergraduate students participated in this pilot project. They were placed in an interdisciplinary environment, instructed to apply 3D design and 3D printing technologies to realize ancient drawings of buildings found in the Dunhuang Mural from the Tang Dynasty, China (618-907 AD). Self-learning and peer-learning pedagogies were adopted in the project, they guided students to overcome the challenges and attain the project outcomes. All participants had successfully completed the assigned tasks and their achievements were recognized in a public exhibition. From the qualitative and quantitative feedbacks, participants reported statistically significant improvement in their perceptions of learning and appreciating cultural heritage through the project. It also revealed that peer-learning was essential for them to complete the 3D designs, while self-learning was adopted in learning cultural heritage knowledge.