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This contribution aims to present an innovative, laboratory‑based teaching approach dedicated to the development of an evaluation report for a public event. This approach was adopted on the occasion of a third mission event promoted by the University of Rome Foro Italico and addressed to the local territory as well as to the University’s academic, technical‑administrative and student communities: the Uniforoitalico Sport Day – Christmas Edition, held on 13 December 2025. For this event, a workshop was designed in which students were able to learn and apply methodological tools through a direct experience in a real‑world context. In line with the perspective of situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991), the entire process was developed with a dual objective: to evaluate the event and to design public engagement strategies for future editions, including in terms of the University’s Third Mission.

To set up the workshop, a call for thesis projects was launched, followed by a preliminary training session addressed to students who had decided to undertake the activity. Subsequently, thanks to a call promoted by the University, additional students joined the group on a voluntary basis. This openness contributed to strengthening the collaborative and inclusive dimension of the experience.

The preparatory phase represented a crucial moment of the educational process. In collaboration with the lecturers, students designed the satisfaction questionnaire—which was later implemented online—and created a QR code to facilitate completion during the event. At the same time, they developed the necessary skills to conduct interviews and video‑interviews in compliance with ethical and privacy principles: they produced informational materials, prepared consent forms, examined the regulations on privacy and the use of images, and translated regulatory indications into operational procedures (for example, particular attention to minors and the possibility of collecting testimonies without filming). This process fostered the development of ethical awareness, responsible communication and relational management—essential competencies for social research and aligned with life skills and transversal competences.

The students also worked with creative methods (Giorgi, Pizzolati, Vacchelli, 2021), including: a large racket‑shaped board, specifically constructed for the event, on which participants could express emotions and perceptions via post‑it notes, prompted by the statement “The Uniforoitalico Christmas Day is…”; and a suggestion and opinion‑polarisation box, decorated with hand‑drawn illustrations representing positive and negative feelings, designed to facilitate the expression of participants’ sentiment.

At the same time, the video‑interviews, combined with extracts from the board and the suggestion box, will constitute the basis for the creation of an emotional video aimed both at promoting the event and at building a narrative device oriented towards public engagement.

Taken as a whole, the activities activated the experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984), enabling students to understand how data collected through heterogeneous tools can guide decisions for event improvement (Guerzoni, 2006). The constant presence of lecturers in coordinating the data collection further reinforced the experience as a genuine exercise in situated learning, transforming the event into a teaching laboratory capable of transmitting both academic and transversal competences.