Playful learning in public space works best when places themselves become part of the experience rather than merely serving as a backdrop.
Between promenades, village squares, irrigation channels and parks, learning often happens exactly where we least expect it, while walking, observing, searching, wondering and talking together. Playful formats in public space can encourage exactly that, provided they take the place seriously and do not simply spread a game across the landscape like a tablecloth over a marble table.
Anyone walking through South Tyrol is rarely moving through a neutral backdrop. Places here often carry several layers at once: landscape, history, language, use, memory. A square in Merano is not just a square. Ask three people and you will get four stories. A path in Schenna is not just a path. A promenade, a historic residence, an irrigation channel, a park or an old chestnut tree often tells far more than is visible at first glance. You just have to stop looking at your phone in the wrong way. Or, and that is the point, learn to use it in the right way.
That is exactly where playful learning in public space begins.
Not with a raised finger. Not with the famous pedagogical frying pan. And not with the attitude of “now we are going to learn something, children!”, which tends to ruin the mood for adults as well. Ideally, it turns a walk into a closer look, a task into a conversation and a place into a web of connections.
At first, that sounds almost suspiciously nice. A bit like the third page of a tourism brochure. That is precisely why it is worth taking a more sober look: what can this approach really do, and where do its limits become visible?
Why playful formats can work at all
One central finding from learning research is that active and playful forms of learning can foster interest and participation. That interest seems to be an important factor in whether educational offers actually have an effect. At the same time, research is cautious: the exact mechanisms are not yet fully understood, and not every playful setting automatically leads to better outcomes.
In a way, that is good news. Not because everything has already been proven, but because it forces us to think more carefully. Anyone speaking seriously about playful learning should not claim that a riddle is educational simply because it is fun. Fun can help, of course. But if fun alone were enough, then any pastime would already count as a strong educational programme.
For me personally, it became clear quite early on that I learn especially well when I can see a connection to real application. For a long time, many abstract concepts were hard for me to grasp, not because they were uninteresting, but because nobody really showed me what they connected to in the real world. Mathematics is a good example. For a long time, many things remained surprisingly vague to me until I encountered the same patterns later in real life. Only then did many things suddenly become understandable, not necessarily because they had become easier, but because they had gained context.
In public space, one more important factor comes into play: the subject of learning is often directly tied to a real place. A story is attached to a façade. An ecological relationship becomes understandable on a specific slope, along a stream or next to a particular tree. A cultural or historical trace gains weight because you are standing exactly where it emerged. Situated experiences like these can deepen learning processes because information does not remain abstract, but becomes anchored in space and in the senses. Or, more simply: people forget less easily what they have actually encountered.
What playful learning in public space can offer
1. It can redirect attention
Today, many places are consumed in passing. Arrive, take a quick look, snap a photo, stamp it mentally as “seen”, and move on. A good playful format interrupts that automatic routine. It invites people to look more closely: at an inscription, the bark of a tree, a line of sight, a small change in the terrain, a detail on a building or a relationship between the layout of a path and the way it is used.
In South Tyrol, with its dense cultural and landscape layers, this is especially interesting. Between spa towns, mountain villages, orchards, castle walls and irrigation channels, whole worlds are packed together. They just do not always reveal themselves on their own. Sometimes it takes a small push for a place to show its second face. A bit like that one relative at dinner who suddenly starts talking for two hours if you ask the right question.
2. It can charge places with meaning
A place does not automatically become interesting just because you put up an information board. Anyone who has ever walked past one without reading it knows that. In other words: all of us.
Meaning arises more easily when perception, action and narrative come together. Reviews of museum learning research show that interactivity, storytelling, supportive structuring and social interaction can all support learning, especially when people do not just read, but observe, talk, explore and construct meaning together.
This transfers surprisingly well to public space. A square remains a square until someone discovers something there. A park remains a park until a question sharpens the eye. A path remains a path until its history, function or ecological character suddenly becomes readable.
That is one of the great strengths of good tour formats: they do not simply place knowledge on top of a place, but help people read the place itself more clearly. Like a pair of glasses you did not know you needed.
3. It can trigger conversations
Learning in public space is often more social than it first appears. Families solve tasks together. Children notice things that adults overlook completely. Adults provide background, children ask the better questions. And yes, sometimes the seventh “why?” in a row is still the best question. Groups compare answers. A station turns into a small conversation, and sometimes even into a small debate.
That is not just a nice side effect. It is a real added value. Informal learning settings in particular benefit when understanding does not remain silent in the mind, but moves into exchange. Museum research has pointed out for years that social interaction is a central part of such learning processes.
Anyone who has seen a family get stuck on a seemingly insignificant detail and turn it into a shared discovery knows that sometimes the most important learning outcome is not the correct answer, but sharpened attention. And sometimes it is simply that moment when everyone says “Ahhh!” at the same time.
4. It can ground digital technology more meaningfully
Digital mediation is often viewed with suspicion. Fair enough, especially when it causes people to stare only at the screen. A natural environment or a historical site does not become better simply because it is covered with effects. If someone stands next to an irrigation channel and only taps at pixels, the point has been missed.
But digital elements can also do the opposite: they can direct attention back toward the surroundings. Studies on location-based AR applications in cultural heritage contexts show that such formats can increase engagement, satisfaction and perceived educational value, provided storytelling and interaction are well embedded and the real environment remains the actual focus.
That may be the most important rule of all: good digital mediation in public space does not pull people away from the place, but leads them more deeply into it.
That is exactly what makes SouthTyrolQuests interesting. The smartphone should not replace the landscape, but make it more readable. It is a tool, not the main character. Or, put differently, the true star is not the display, but everything behind it, beside it and all around it. The mountains deserve that much.
Where the limits lie
1. Not every game is already good mediation
This is probably the most sobering insight, and anyone working in education knows it well: a playful format is not automatically a good learning format. Riddles can motivate, but they can also hide the content. If in the end people only remember codes, points or mechanics, then perhaps they were entertained. But that does not necessarily mean they understood anything in depth.
Play and content have to fit each other. A historical urban space needs different tasks than a forest trail. A family route needs different kinds of stimuli than an offer for school classes or culturally interested adults. If the same game mechanic is applied everywhere, it may create recognisability, but not depth.
2. Public space is a stubborn teacher
Outdoors, conditions are almost never like a laboratory. There is weather, in South Tyrol sometimes four seasons in one afternoon, there is noise, distraction, backlight, crowds, tired children, technical trouble and very different levels of prior knowledge. All of that makes public space exciting, but also pleasantly stubborn.
That is exactly why good formats need to be built more robustly and more clearly than many theoretical concepts suggest. What looks elegant on the desk sometimes falls apart by the third station outside. At the latest when the wind blows the paper away or the phone battery drops to 3 percent. Anyone who does mediation outdoors learns humility quickly. And that is not a bad thing.
3. Technology can help, but it can also get in the way
GPS, audio, visual hints or interactive tasks can make a format strong. But they can also make it fragile. As soon as technology becomes too dominant, attention shifts. At that point, people are no longer really with a place, but with an app being used somewhere outdoors. That is the risk.
Research on location-based digital learning formats underlines exactly this balance: technology is useful when it supports observation, interaction and orientation. Not when it overlays or obscures the physical environment.
4. The effect is plausible, but not always easy to measure
There is another point that should be stated honestly: informal learning is not as easy to measure as a traditional teaching unit. People remember moments, atmospheres, conversations and surprising details. But how lasting, deep or transferable those learning experiences are is often difficult to assess. It is hard to call someone three weeks later and ask, “Do you still remember the tree bark at station 4?”
Research itself points to these gaps and calls for more qualitative and quantitative evidence in order to understand more clearly which strategies work especially well in which settings.
That is not an argument against playful formats. It is more of an invitation not to become either naively enthusiastic or cynical.
What follows from this in practice
If playful learning in public space is taken seriously, a few simple but important rules follow.
First: the place has to be able to speak.
Not every theme fits every location. Good mediation works with what a place already offers, spatially, atmospherically, historically or ecologically. You have to listen to a place before you start “activating” it.
Second: the game needs to serve the content.
A task should not only entertain, but guide perception and thinking in a certain direction.
Third: often less is more.
Too many mechanics, too much text and too many digital stimuli rarely improve a format. Sometimes the strongest station is the one built around a single good question.
Fourth: shared discovery has value in itself.
For families, small groups or school classes in particular, the social dimension is not an accessory, but part of the learning process. The best moments often happen between the official stations.
Fifth: technology has to remain in service of the experience.
It may support, structure, motivate and make things visible. But it should never overshadow the place. If people say at the end, “great app”, that is nice. If they say, “what a great place”, that is even better.
And what does this mean for South Tyrol?
In many ways, South Tyrol is almost a special case in the best possible sense. The region brings together strong landscapes, dense cultural history, visible transitions and ruptures, tourist movement, everyday local places and a particular linguistic complexity. Where else do you find signposts in three languages while locals may casually use a fourth?
That is precisely why the region is well suited to place-based mediation formats, as long as they do not slide into kitsch, pure eventisation or arbitrary game mechanics. South Tyrol already has enough substance. It does not need a costume.
A good place does not need flashy effects. It needs attention.
And perhaps that is where the real strength of playful tours lies: they can help create that attention without covering the whole place in pedagogy. A small impulse, a well-placed question, a task that fits the space. Sometimes that is enough to turn passing through into actual noticing. And sometimes it is enough to make someone stop and really look for the first time.
Conclusion
Playful learning in public space can offer a great deal. It can sharpen attention, spark curiosity, open conversations and make places readable in ways that pure information often does not achieve. It can connect digital technology to real spaces in a meaningful way and work precisely where people did not set out with the intention of “learning something”.
But it is not a miracle solution. It does not replace good design, knowledge of place or carefully built mediation. Its strength does not lie in disguising learning, but in bringing together place, action and meaning in such a way that a route can become an experience and an experience can become understanding.
Or, to put it a little less academically:
not every riddle makes you wiser. But a good riddle, in the right place, with a view of the mountains and perhaps an apple strudel afterwards, can set a surprising number of things in motion.
References
- Andre, L., Durksen, T. & Volman, M. (2017): Museums as avenues of learning for children: a decade of research. Learning Environments Research 20, 47–76.
- Blinkoff, E., Nesbitt, K. T., Golinkoff, R. M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2023): Investigating the contributions of active, playful learning to student interest and educational outcomes. Acta Psychologica 239, 103983.
- Kleftodimos, A., Moustaka, M. & Evagelou, A. (2023): Location-Based Augmented Reality for Cultural Heritage Education. Digital 3(1), 18–45.
Curious what these principles feel like in a real experience?
Explore our tours in South Tyrol, with stories, riddles and places that reveal much more when you take a closer look.
This article was translated from German with the help of artificial intelligence.