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.