On 18 March 2020, Spanish museums saw their in-person activities come to a halt. This paradigm shift has raised questions concerning how these institutions reinvented themselves and modified their edu-communicative strategies to promote heritage through active citizen participation. The present study centers on analyzing how the main Spanish archaeological museums and sites (N = 254) have used Twitter as an edu-communicative tool and analyzes the content of their hashtags through a mixed methodology. The objective is to identify the educational strategies for both transmitting information as well as interacting with users. We did it by observing and analyzing if Spanish archaeological institutions are promoting a type of quality, accessible, and egalitarian education and promoting the creation of cyber communities that ensure the sustainability of heritage through citizen participation. This paper proposes an innovative assessment of communication on Twitter based on the purpose of messages from the viewpoint of heritage education, their r-elational factor, and predominant type of learning. The main findings reveal a significant increase in Twitter activity, both in quantitative and qualitative terms: educational content is gaining primacy over the simple sharing of basic information and promotional content. The networks forge new ways to teach–learn and interact with media and represent a strong channel to promote the sustainability of heritage, its preservation, and appreciation.

Improving heritage educommunication on the web 2.0 is key to reaching certain sustainable development goals focused on educational quality and citizen participation. Although numerous partial studies have already been conducted, to date neither assessment tools nor detailed studies are available regarding the quality of educommunicative initiatives. Spain and Italy’s archaeological heritage museums have a consolidated track record on Twitter, which has been bolstered by museum closures due to COVID-19 and has resulted in a significant change to their educommunicative policies. The present article aims to analyze educommunicative actions undertaken on Twitter at Italian archaeological museums, compare their strategies with a previous study on Spanish institutions, and analyze to what degree the sustainability of heritage, citizen participation, learning opportunities, and universal access are being promoted. This mixed method analysis was carried out through the implementation of a web 2.0 heritage educommunication analysis tool focused on three key factors: educational procedure, R-elational interactions, and the prevailing learning paradigm, as well as a content analysis of the variables that comprise them. The key findings suggest that neither country is close to achieving a quality educommunicative strategy. Italian archaeological heritage institutions use Twitter simply as an advertising platform. Despite being a social media platform, participative initiatives are scarcely promoted, although heritage sustainability is promoted through raising awareness of conservation and appreciation. Spanish institutions, however, demonstrated the opposite pattern of use.

As a consequence of the scarcity of studies of augmented reality (AR) in Spain, this study developed a questionnaire to evaluate teachers’ perceptions on the use of AR for heritage teaching (n = 347 teachers: n = 131 in-service/n = 216 in-training). The objectives were to: (1) identify teachers’ existing knowledge about AR; (2) evaluate educational strategies teachers value most in AR apps for teaching; (3) evaluate necessary AR functions; (4) determine desired technical and functional characteristics; and (5) compare any significant differences between the two groups. The results provide a contribution to the increasing implementation of AR apps in heritage education, which promotes the understanding, enjoyment, experience and knowledge of heritage. Heritage education is increasingly present in Spanish classrooms due to awareness of the country’s rich heritage, and AR is a good tool for understanding and linking society with its heritage. From the results, it is clear that, despite their desire for implementation, there is a lack of teacher training in applying AR; both subsamples pointed out the importance of humanising the explanations in AR apps with experts or actors who mediate heritage and value the ease of use of these apps, multifunctionality, low battery consumption, and use in the background. Significant differences suggest potentially greater educational commitment among active teachers who seek deep and meaningful learning, above the superficiality and enjoyment reported by teachers in training and, on the contrary, the value placed on technical and visual aspects, related to the high use of mobile devices.

Which historical figures do Spanish students think are relevant after completing their compulsory schooling in the subject of history? The main objective of this research is to discover which four historical figures students choose as the most important in human history after completing their compulsory schooling, and the type of reasons they give to justify their answers. By means of a mixed study, this research involved asking 165 students, aged 16 to 17, which four figures they think are the most relevant in history and why. Based on this statement, a quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted to explore the students’ discourses justifying their choices using the categories proposed by Partington, Hunt and Lévesque. The results show a clear tendency in students to choose key figures in Spain’s history, such as Christopher Columbus or Francisco Franco, or a prominent person, such as Adolf Hitler, as the most relevant historical figures, who appear in the curriculum in their last year of compulsory secondary education. Lastly, the argumentative approach regarding the level of historical significance focuses primarily on the impact of their actions on a large number of people during their historical moment, with no critical reflection on their long-term impact or consequences.

Contribución al debate de revista PH 102 sobre Comunicación y redes sociales en instituciones culturales.