SERIOUS GAMES TO SUPPORT LEARNING OF RARE ‘INTANGIBLE’ CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS

The paper deals with the adoption of Serious Games (SGs) in the specific area of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Education (ICH).

The transmission of some cultural expressions, like rare traditional singing or dancing, is more related to the acquisition of procedural knowledge (i.e. how to perform some tasks, like a dance step) rather than to declarative knowledge (i.e. knowledge that can be declared or stated through words or symbol systems, e.g. music notation). Coherently, so far knowledge in these areas has been transmitted mainly by observation or imitation of experts/performers in real contexts. Grounding on the research results in Game Based Learning and on the opportunity offered by cutting-edge sensors technologies, the i-Treasures project will exploit the interesting potential of Serious Games in the ICH field. As a matter of fact, the game’s capability to train motor skills and to support sensorimotor learning for teaching/learning, together with their ability to enhance engagement and motivation, are the main elements at the heart of our choice. In the paper we discuss in depth the theoretical rationale behind the adoption of Serious Games in this specific field and their current use in Cultural Heritage Education. Furthermore, the paper describes the main design principles adopted by the i-Treasures project to address the specificities of the various artistic expressions and to make the games sound and effective tools to support practice and learning.