Immersive and participatory serious games for heritage education, applied to the cultural heritage of South Tyrol

Abstract

Heritage education is an activity that is increasingly present in the educational curricula of schools and museums. Cognitive mechanisms and Representation devices must be thoroughly analysed and designed in order to promote the creation of didactic paths to foster effective learning experiences. Immersive visualization technologies are well suited for gamification applications and the technological and economic accessibility of VR HMD (head-mounted display) viewers makes these technologies particularly attractive for the development of potentially more widespread methodologies. This article will describe an educational path, and the relative experimentation, on the cultural heritage focused on the production of the typical bread of the Val Pusteria area - and the rural life around it. The project was aimed at primary school children and was based on a serious game in Virtual Immersive Reality.

Exploring enjoyment while playing “Temple Lego”- A virtual reality cultural heritage serious game for architecture students.

“…In another study [29] VR maps allow movement through historical trails and 3D models of architecture that no longer exist and allow topographic points of modern space to be overlaid with virtual perspectives of historical architecture. One important advantage of VR for studying heritage education is its ability to accurately recreate virtual objects and environments, such as the South Tyrolean traditional farms [30]. This enables students to gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics and connections between objects and environments that would be challenging to observe in everyday life.…”

“…Studies [25], [30], [31], [32], [33] reveal that the intricate architectural details combined with high-resolution imagery and audio narrations for objects of historical interest in coordination with the user's viewpoint within the VR environment provided an excellent learning experience.…”

“…Speci cally, immersive virtual reality (VR) games provide a range of advantages when it comes to educational applications. Various studies suggest Virtual reality (VR) has proven to be suitable for disseminating cultural heritage awareness through serious games [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12].…”

Gamification in education: A citation network analysis using CitNetExplorer

“…Bioglio et al (2019) examined the issue of privacy awareness among school children via the use of a social networking game. Another paper looked at enhancing student understanding of heritage issues related to architectural design through virtual reality systems that can emulate building designs (Luigini et al, 2019). The final paper on this theme investigated the use of a multi-touch interactive jigsaw puzzle to improve elementary students' understanding of geographical concepts related to Taiwan (Cheng-Yu et al, 2014).…”

Dreamscape Bricks VR: An Experimental Virtual Reality Tool for Architectural Design

“…Several studies have focused on the use of VR in education [6][7][8]. Other studies focus on VR in architectural design and education [9][10][11][12], urban applications of VR [13,14], and VR in architectural heritage [15][16][17]. It can be argued that the availability of consumer-level VR devices such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and the increasing number of VR applications in architecture and design motivated researchers to investigate the potential of VR technology in design in recent years.…”