Nonlinear Interactive Stories as an Educational Resource

Abstract

Working with digitized cultural heritage is an important aspect of education. This article offers research on the interaction of pupils and teachers with digitized cultural heritage processed in the Twine2 environment, focusing on exploring the potential use of digital nonlinear stories in the teaching of humanities in high schools. The aim of this study is to describe the design process that led to the creation of 16 innovative educational resources, and to present the results of their pilot testing and evaluation, which subsequently took place among participating teachers and pupils. For the evaluation, we used a mix of design methods, combining a quantitative and qualitative approach. Both the teachers and the pupils were asked about their experience and takeaways from the interaction with the resources offered. The findings show that presenting educational content in the form of a nonlinear interactive story is a suitable alternative to the traditional frontal educational approach, as both teachers and pupils perceived the resources as intuitive, appealing, and effective in helping to achieve the set educational goals. The study also highlights some key recommendations for future designers of nonlinear interactive stories, which emerged from the respondents’ feedback.

1. Introduction

The development of modern educational technology has enabled exciting innovations to be introduced into the school environment at all levels to improve specific aspects of learning. There are many examples of the use of e-learning [1,2], virtual reality [3,4], video games [5,6], and other technologies. Each of these technologies can pursue its goals concerning the educational domain, target group, and other parameters. However, technology alone does not allow for comprehensive education in all areas. Academic research focuses on specific areas of education and investigates the effectiveness of using particular digital tools. At the same time, in the environment of developed countries, we can observe a rapid increase in the availability of technology, either directly in schools or among pupils themselves, the majority of whom own smart mobile phones that can significantly expand the range of educational activities without the need for schools to invest in specific equipment.

The aim of this study is to describe the creative and evaluation process of educational resources intended for high school pupils who work with digitized cultural heritage in the form of nonlinear interactive stories. The resources were created using the Twine2 environment. For the evaluation, we used a mix of design methods, combining information from the pupils and their teachers.

The primary motivation for developing the educational resources was to find ways to allow high school pupils to engage with digitized cultural heritage. The situation of digitization is such that many digitized artefacts abound in memory institutions; however, these institutions have only a limited ability to transfer them to actual teaching in high schools. It is important to note that digitized objects are not just simple imitations of their analogue counterparts or ontologically worthless objects [7], but paths that lead to new possibilities to study, research, or work with these objects. Approaches or methods of analysis that are not possible with physical objects have been highlighted [8,9,10,11]. They form a specific layer of cultural heritage that would otherwise not allow this kind of interaction due to limited access, poor object condition, etc. Our research focuses specifically on new forms of interactions that are possible with digital objects, but which are very rarely available with physical artefacts. Individual objects are connected into new entities and supplemented with a newly tailored story to create a new specific environment to work with these objects [12,13].

This creates resources that allow working with game design elements, autonomous decision making, role-playing, or narrative immersion over the substrate of digitized cultural heritage. As highlighted by studies [14,15], it is necessary that these are digital resources explicitly created for educational purposes and, at the same time, should be linked to instructional guides for teachers [16,17]. For the resources we created, there was an even more specific requirement for them to be designated as open educational resources (OER) [18,19,20].

The resources’ design was based on storytelling principles in education that are well established in the literature. Koki [21] emphasizes that storytelling is the heart and soul of education because it treats the story as a fundamental anthropological experience. Gallagher [22] emphasizes that the story allows one to enter a situation and form one’s critical attitudes toward it based on lived experience. Working with a story can foster empathy and humanism [23].

The educational resources that we created are based on the definition of McLellan [24], who understands digital storytelling as an interconnected mix of multimedia objects (videos, images, texts, or games) into one whole. Ohler [25] emphasizes that such an educational approach develops different integrative kinds of literacy, often related to ICT literacy, information literacy, and reading literacy. In our case, the development is also linked to the content of the resource itself—digital storytelling is a means to develop competencies and learning in a specific subject area (modern history, philosophy, literature). Greene et al. [26] focus on research on civic engagement, an essential perspective for our work, as we also aim to develop values-based learning in education. Our resources focused on the humanities and social sciences, which represent a minority of resources in digital streaming [27]. In this regard, we also reflect on our work as new and essential for developing human knowledge. In line with the premises of Liu et al. [28], we see the promotion of autonomous learning as a critical dimension.

For creation of the resources, we chose to use Twine2, an open-source online tool for creating text-based interactive stories. However, in addition to text, this tool also allows inserting a variety of multimedia, which (in accordance with the principles stated above) supports the concept of an educational resource as a mix of various multimedia objects, including numerous forms of digitized cultural heritage. Furthermore, Twine2 also meets other conditions set at the beginning of the project: accessibility (it is available for free and without the need for registration), openness (its outputs can be reopened and further edited), simplicity (no knowledge of programming is required), and availability of support (quality documentation and an active user community).

The potential of Twine2 for creating interactive stories has already been partially explored in an academic context. Bandy [29] considers its main advantages to be the ability to progress the story in different directions while working with details that may be relevant to some users and skipped by others. Shibolet et al. [30] classify Twine2 as a tool for creating hypertext-oriented texts that offer prearranged lines of interpretation from which the user chooses. In Twine2, it is possible to use scripts to create inventories or reflect on the passage of material, embed objects in it, and use other possibilities offered by hypertext. Boyd [31] discusses working in Twine2 from a perspective of literary scholarship and demonstrates the various options for creative work in the actual writing of literary stories. Hahn [32] offers a perspective of Twine2 from game studies [32].

Twine2 is a tool that has received academic attention, especially in the last four years. However, the general reflection on the possibilities of using it to create educational resources is limited and has presented a significant challenge for our research.

2. The Process of Educational Resources Development

The process of creating each resource was complex, as shown in Figure 1. As the aim of developing the educational resources was to work with digitized cultural heritage [33,34,35] in a high school environment, it was necessary to conduct research on the interests of high schools before the actual creation (questionnaires were distributed to pupils and teachers, which identified 16 thematic units that we addressed later in the development and evaluation). The second step was to search the literature and available materials under an open license and prepare the first drafts of the deliverables.

Each resource went through internal discussions about narrowing down the topic, choosing the appropriate form, working with sources, and completing research. The final form was created from scratch in the Twine2 system, which supports the processes of creative writing and nonlinear structuring of stories [31,32]. The resource was graphically edited and was tested (pilot research) in one classroom. This was followed by another round of editing based on feedback from the teacher in that class. The resource was then tested in three schools (at least one classroom in each school) and again edited into a final version based on feedback received from pupils (questionnaires) and teachers (individual interviews).

This process is based on design thinking principles [36,37,38], which seek to offer educational resources that are best adapted to the needs of the target group. Here, we are using some research findings [16,17], and an instructional guide was created from the beginning for each resource.

Materials from the Moravian Library in Brno, the Masaryk University digital library, and other memory institutions were used for the production. All content was created in Twine2 and supplemented with interactive exercises designed with the help of an open-source platform, H5P.org. Twine2 allows users to create nonlinear stories and follow their structure, enabling us to perform simple tasks and work with the analysis of the flow of the student’s journey through the material. H5P allows Twine2’s embed HTML object to be used, so embeds can be inserted into it to create simple activities such as quizzes, make-up exercises, hotspots on images and other forms of interactivity. The student’s training is thus determined both by the story itself (Twine2) and by the activation when working on specific tasks (H5P).

Different topics require different approaches, so the emphasis is on role-playing in some, whereas decision making or a research-oriented approach to working with the materials are emphasized in others. In the design of the resources, we put much emphasis on being able to work with the material on both desktop and mobile devices, high-quality graphics, and sufficiently immersive text (as confirmed by the presented results).

3. Educational Resources

The educational unit consisted of two parts, a custom nonlinear multimedia resource created in Twine2 and an instructional guide for teachers. Both parts were available to the teachers before the actual lesson so that they could prepare for the lesson according to their habits. Most lessons took place in a computer room, but there were also cases of pupils working with tablets or mobile phones. The nonlinear stories have a sophisticated responsive design, so working with different kinds of devices was not problematic.

Twine2 is an open-source tool (which was crucial for our choice) that allowed us to create nonlinear interactive stories (typically built like game books). It supports three languages for story creation, from which we chose Harlowe to use for the creation of our resources. This allowed us to work with macros and scripts, so we could keep track of a pupil’s passage through the resource, store their current position, render a progress bar, or work with an inventory (in some cases, pupils “collect” objects while going through the story) while being user-friendly. Our goal was to create open-source resources that teachers or pupils can eventually extend, change, or restructure themselves.

The language is based on XML or HTML structure, complemented by support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. The resources themselves were mainly built around a nonlinear story in which the pupil experiences a situation (a monastery being raided by the police, the life of a student in a 19th-century city, the Chernobyl explosion, etc.) in which they can make various choices that determine the direction of the story.

As described in the previous chapter, apart from multimedia (images, videos, audio recordings, etc.), Twine2 also allowed us to insert external content through embed codes, which opened a plethora of possibilities for what content we could offer through it. In addition to embedded websites, we mainly used the H5P.org framework to incorporate various activities into the stories. This allowed the pupils to work with multiple quizzes and exercises, solve puzzles, search for a specific person in a photo, etc. Using these elements made the work with the resource active and enabled pupils to immediately realize what is essential in the material. Examples of applying H5P functions can be seen below. They include Image Hotspots (Figure 2) where pupils are tasked with identifying certain points in the picture, and another allows them to compare a historical photo with a current one using the Image Slider function (Figure 3).

The development of the resources followed the requirements for pupils in high schools to be able to work with digitized cultural heritage. In the story, the pupils were able to actively work with the key objects—these can be newspaper clippings, photographs, or excerpts from books, as well as videos and audio recordings (e.g., recordings of oral testimonies, recited poems, etc.). It should be stressed that the forms of particular learning resources differed, some taking the shape of a story, others having more the character of a nonlinear gallery, or an interactive textbook. It follows that each resource called for different types of digitized objects. Figure 4 shows two examples of such objects in one of the resources: a scan of a real letter from 1940, which serves as a prop in the story (a), and photographs of witnesses of a historical event which, when clicked on, start an audio recording of their oral testimony (b).

The finished resources were exported from Twine2 as HTML files and made available to pupils through a web link. The teachers were delivered both the web link to the resource and the instructional guide in the form of a text document. The guide was created for each resource, and, besides an overview of the learning objectives and methods, provided teachers with the recommended inclusion in the educational plan and the suggestion of questions for final reflection or discussion. The recommended structure of the lesson followed an ERR framework structure: a brief introduction of the topic (evocation), individual work with the resource (realization of meaning), an assignment (group or individual), and sharing of findings with the classroom (reflection).

4. Methodology

In this study, we worked through the design approach with research, which emphasizes the need for the user to reflect on the experience of a particular service or another phenomenon to engage with it. We used a research-through-design and design-through-research approach to gather feedback (user testing) based on user interaction with an artefact and subsequently modify the object. This research focused not on general user testing but on the modification and development of educational resources and the different research tools and procedures that correspond to this.

Our study works with an uncommon type of educational resource: 16 digital interactive stories created in Twine2 focused on exposing digitized cultural heritage. Their school implementation is aimed at the humanities and social sciences subjects taught in Czech high schools: history, Czech language and literature, social sciences (psychology, political science, philosophy, sociology, media education, etc.), and arts.

Within the study, our aim was to answer the following research questions:

• Can the Twine2 application be used to create nonlinear interactive multimedia stories based on working with digitized cultural heritage in a high school environment?
• How do high school pupils evaluate Twine2 resources?
• How do high school teachers evaluate Twine2 resources?

The study submitted focuses on the results of pilot testing of educational resources in selected high schools, conducted from October 2021 to March 2022.

The research applied a mixed methods approach; semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers to learn more about their experiences of working with the resources in the classroom, while the pupils’ opinions on the educational resources were ascertained through questionnaires. The whole research process can be observed in Figure 5, while the individual research stages are described in more detail in the following sections.

4.1. Research on Teachers

4.1.1. Participants

The study involved 28 teachers from five high schools in the South Moravian Region. The criterion for inclusion in the study was a qualification in teaching a humanities or social sciences subject (history, Czech language and literature, psychology, arts, etc.).

The research sample was compiled with regard to the diversity of age, gender, qualification (or subjects taught), and length of professional experience of the respondents. Out of 28 respondents, 14 identified as male and 14 as female. The duration of their practice ranged from 2 to 45 years, with an average length of experience of 20 years. All teachers were qualified to teach humanities and social sciences, that is, history (15 teachers), Czech language and literature (13 teachers), social sciences (12 teachers), foreign languages (5 teachers), geography (5 teachers), and arts or music (2 teachers).

To preserve anonymity, all respondents were assigned code names under which all responses will be presented.

Table 1. Composition of the research sample (teachers).

Code Name	Professional Experience (Years)	Qualifications	Resources Tested
Assire	31–35	History, Foreign Language	4
Cahir	1–5	History, Geography	3
Calanthe	31–35	History, Literature, Foreign Language	1
Crach	6–10	Social Sciences	1
Eithne	21–25	Social Sciences, Literature	1
Emhyr	11–15	History, Social Sciences	3
Eskel	11–15	History, Literature	1
Eyck	1–5	History, Literature	1
Francesca	31–35	History, Literature	2
Fringilla	36–40	History, Literature	3
Gerhart	45–50	History, Literature, Social Sciences	1
Istredd	1–5	Social Sciences, Arts/Music	1
Keira	6–10	Literature, Arts/Music	1
Lambert	16–20	Geography	1
Lydia	16–20	Social Sciences, Foreign Language	1
Margarita	26–30	Social Sciences, Literature	2
Meve	16–20	Geography	1
Nenneke	31–35	History, Literature	3
Philippa	31–35	History, Literature	3
Regis	11–15	History	1
Rience	16–20	History, Social Sciences	2
Sabrina	16–20	Social Sciences, Literature	3
Shani	1–5	Arts/Music, Foreign Language	1
Sigismund	26–30	History, Social Sciences	2
Tissaia	31–35	Social Sciences, Foreign Language	1
Vesemir	41–45	Social Sciences, Literature	2
Yarpen	6–10	Geography	2
Zoltan	11–15	History, Geography	1

shows the composition of the research sample, including information about the length of their professional experience (divided into five-year intervals), their qualifications, and the number of tested resources.

4.1.2. Data Collection and Analysis

Information from teachers was obtained through individual semi-structured interviews, which took place either in person at their home schools, or online via MS Teams (depending on the respondent’s preference). The average length of the interview was 28 min, with the shortest interview lasting 9 min and the longest 56 min. With the consent of the respondents, audio recordings of both types of interviews were made, which were subsequently transcribed into text files.

During the interviews, the teachers were first asked to briefly describe the course of the lesson in which the particular resource had been tested. Then, they were asked a set of questions regarding their opinions on the storytelling format of the resource, its advantages and limits, and incorporation of the digitized cultural heritage into the stories (its form, quantity, media format, etc.), including their previous experience with this type of material. The second part of the interview was dedicated to collecting feedback on the resource itself (e.g., how they evaluate its form and content, whether they were satisfied with the instructional guide, what they would change in the resource) in order to improve the resource and better adapt it to the target group. In this study, we will present the results from the first part of the interview, as the goal of the second half was purely evaluative; in other words, its purpose was to obtain a formative assessment of the resource which would serve for its further adjustments.

The transcripts of the interviews underwent a process of deductive coding, with the codes following the interview structure (see above). However, as the coding progressed, new codes were gradually added based on recurring information in the statements (e.g., role-playing aspect, personalization, etc.). The final codes were further combined into themes, which subsequently served as categories for the research findings (presented as subheadings in Section 5).

Coding was carried out in Taguette, an application that allows qualitative data analysis while supporting teamwork. Each interview was coded by the researcher who had conducted it and then checked by another member of the research team after the initial coding of all interviews had been carried out. In this way, greater coding coherence was achieved across interviews, while also alleviating possible bias of the individual researchers.

4.2. Research on Pupils

4.2.1. Participants

The sample consisted of pupils from selected high schools who had participated in the pilot study and then completed the questionnaires. Participants were selected by a method of availability sampling, as they all belonged to the regular classrooms of participating teachers. In total, pupils from 48 classrooms participated in the pilot study, of which 8 (16.6%) belonged to the ninth grade (freshman), 6 (12.5%) to the 10th grade (sophomore), 15 (31.3%) to the 11th grade (junior), and 19 (39.6%) to the 12th grade (senior). The size of the classrooms ranged from 10 to 30 people, with an average of 19 people in a classroom.

A total of 754 questionnaires were collected; however, the exact number of unique participants is unknown, as, with regard to the protection of the pupils’ identity, they were not asked for any personal information. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, the pupils who completed the questionnaires are considered the research sample, while there may be more than one questionnaire submitted by the same person (although no person tested the same resource twice, which means that each questionnaire describes a unique experience with the resource).

The composition of the sample was not influenced by the researchers in any way; to ensure their anonymity, the respondents were not asked any personal questions (i.e., name, age, gender), nor were their responses matched to a specific school. The sample diversity was ensured by the selection of participating schools (see Section 4.1.1), that were approximately evenly represented in the sample.

4.2.2. Data Collection and Analysis

Respondents’ answers were collected through anonymous online questionnaires. The questionnaires were administered to the respondents through teachers and filled out by the pupils either immediately after the class or no later than the following day. All questionnaires were identical, regardless of school or the type of the educational resource. Of the 948 questionnaires sent out, 754 were returned (hence the 79.5% response rate).

The questionnaire consisted of five closed-ended questions (with the answers available on a three- to four-point rating scale) and a single open-ended question (see Appendix A). The questions were devoted to several aspects of the resources, namely familiarity and comprehensibility of the resources’ topics (whose selection process is described in Section 2), assessment of the pupils’ own ability to form an idea and opinion about the topic of the resource (in other words, the effectiveness of the resource in introducing the topic), and the role of authentic materials in the resource. Due to the focus of this study on storytelling aspects of the resources and use of digitized cultural heritage, only selected questions will be analyzed in the following chapters.

Data were analyzed using simple statistical methods, with open-ended question responses subjected to topic classification. Based on the main point of the answer, a set of tags was created and assigned to the pupils’ statements.

5. Results

The results section, like the methodology, is divided into two parts.

The first part describes the evaluation of nonlinear interactive stories as educational resources by teachers (the qualitative approach). Individual teachers are identified by code names (as shown in Table 1) so that continuity with their qualifications, experience, and the links between their statements are apparent. The structure of the chapter corresponds to the themes described in the Methodology section.

The second part of this section focuses on the responses of the pupils collected through anonymous questionnaires (the quantitative approach). In their responses, we do not distinguish pupils by “names” because the collection of their responses was fully anonymous.

5.1. Research on Teachers

The results of the qualitative research are structured into thematic clusters according to the most dominant subtopic that emerged from the interviews: advantages of the storytelling approach, personalization of educational content, role-playing, limits of the storytelling approach, use of the digitized cultural heritage, novelty and unusualness of the digitized content, multimediality, and limits on the use of digitized cultural heritage.

Advantages of the storytelling approach. In general, the story format of the resources was positively received by the teachers. In their answers, they often emphasized the fact that working with the resource felt natural, and the pupils were genuinely drawn into the stories offered.

Teachers also provided their perspective on the comparison of the story format with traditional teaching methods, while pointing out what they perceived as the advantages of the storytelling approach: a potential to engage pupils (the keyword “interesting” was often repeated) and greater success in explaining general principles due to the specific context and concrete examples included in the stories.

‘I liked that the pupils were drawn into it and that it was all so natural.’

(Lydia)

‘The story is definitely suitable educational material, because it is […] interesting, it is always well remembered, and above all, […] it is possible to explain things better through the story than through theory.’

(Sabrina)

‘I think they are very nice and important, because they are certainly more interesting and the pupils will picture [the topic taught] better than if they only learned about politics, the economy, and so on.’

(Nenneke)

‘[…] they expand the basic curriculum. Otherwise, we talk about propaganda, about the Eastern Bloc, about the Western Bloc, and it is such a terribly dreary theory. I try to cultivate curiosity in the pupils, so they ask questions when they have someone to ask, […] what I am trying to say is that these resources are very important.’

(Philippa)

‘I think it is a great addition to the regular classes, because after all, the pupils get to hear me every day, and now they have the opportunity to hear [the story] from someone else, in a different way, with different words.’

(Istredd)

‘[…] in general, teaching through stories is one of the most effective [methods], which is simply a given fact. So, a story always definitely helps, and I think this was quite… It was so simple, but in a way […] it really explained a lot of things, and when it was accompanied by those pictures or newspaper articles, it was really great.’

(Yarpen)

These comments are consistent with what we already know from the literature, namely that of Koki [21], who suggests that stories have the potential to become effective instructional tools or Price et al. [39], who imply that using stories for delivering teaching content to pupils can promote deeper understanding of the topic. Therefore, when designing an educational resource based on storytelling, we should focus on choosing scenarios that maximize the impact of what we know to be the strengths of this method over traditional face-to-face teaching, specifically emphasizing details instead of generalities, individuals instead of groups, concrete examples and demonstrations, cultivation of curiosity (“How will it end?”), or giving a voice to someone other than the teacher the pupils are already used to.

Personalization of educational content. Another important aspect of the stories that the participants often mentioned is a phenomenon they called “personalization”, or “humanization”—in other words, the ability of a story to demonstrate the impact of historical and social changes on individuals.

‘I don’t know if I am using the right term, but that kind of personalization, that humanization of the event and the connection with specific people who are introduced there, their family background, everything, that it’s simply a story of a specific person.’

(Assire)

‘[…] even one of the pupils told me that it was very important to them that it was not a fiction, but […] that it was actually a real way of abusing that thinking. So that’s what I really liked about it.’

(Sigismund)

‘[…] they obviously read it with interest, because it is the individual persons who are interesting, you can picture them; most of our pupils identify as girls, so Anna’s story is interesting for them, they can project their own experiences into it.’

(Rience)

‘It will make them realize [w]hat an effort it must have cost [the women]. […] Not only the arguments for and against [female education] but also for them as pupils, how much effort she had to make and what risk it entailed for her future life. They can’t even imagine today. […] Yes, I think the story was very motivating in this respect.’

(Fringilla)

Based on the observations of the pupils’ behavior, the interviewed teachers believed that the authenticity of the stories had a great impact on the pupils’ motivation to participate in the class. They especially appreciated it when the pupils could identify with the storyteller in some way (e.g., based on age, gender, origin, etc.). From this, we can conclude that, when creating educational resources, it is very important to either work with real stories or at least with those that are fictitious but inspired by real life and, more importantly, it is crucial to make the pupils aware of this aspect.

Role-playing. As several stories were based on a role-playing method (which means that the pupils did not experience the story as an unbiased observer, but from the point of view of one of the characters), some participants elaborated on the importance of this aspect. They particularly highlighted that the opportunity to experience the situation in someone else’s skin helped the pupils foster empathy and compassion for historical figures (especially if the resource intentionally offered roles with conflicting goals and motivations).

‘I like that they can experience the story from both sides and that they can try to understand the behavior of those people from both points of view.’

(Nenneke)

‘It is also important to see how the pupils think someone else would behave. And even the fact that Adam is a student of economics should have played a role in it; how do they understand what an economist should look like, how he should behave, what his values are, etc.’

(Margarita)

‘I liked the division of roles, and […] the discussion as it was then, whether it would change the result if they decided differently… So, I think that was great. That it really brought the material to life and that you had the feeling that you were deciding something at that moment.’

(Emhyr)

The positive effect of role-playing on the support of empathy and humanism has been proven in the literature [22,23]. The teachers’ statements, therefore, not only confirm this fact, but also provide suggestions for elements that a well-built role-play should contain. Primarily, the pupils appreciate an opportunity to choose from multiple roles, including those with which they do not identify as easily, or which could even be considered negative characters. Another finding is that it turned out to be important for the pupils to have the opportunity to influence the direction of the story, and possibly (if the theme of the story allowed it) to lead their character to different endings depending on choices throughout the story.

Limits of the storytelling approach. The potential limits of the storytelling approach were also pointed out during the interviews. The need to improve orientation in the resources turned out to be the most frequent request of the teachers; unlike linear stories with a clearly defined order of chapters, it is not possible to leave the story at any time, flip back, or see how many pages are left. Hence, if the nonlinear stories lack clear orientation elements, they can be confusing for pupils. Likewise, the time aspect was brought up frequently—teachers were convinced that pupils would feel more comfortable while working with the resource if they were continuously aware of how much material is ahead of them.

‘Sometimes I had the feeling that they got a little lost in scrolling through the template, but on the other hand, it takes some time to get the hang of it. When I first went through it, I was confused.’

(Crach)

‘[…] there is also a bit of uncertainty in the fact that they don’t know how long they will be working with [the resource], so they might sometimes tend to skip lines or apply this kind of accelerated reading, because they don’t know if there was still material waiting for them for the next 20 or 5 [minutes].’

(Meve)

‘They would welcome a progress bar on each slide.’

(Zoltan)

‘[…] after clicking on a link, I would like to go back, which the resource did not allow me. That is a shame, because I had to go all the way to the very end of the story, whereas I would have liked to be able to go back and choose the other path.’

(Eskel)

‘Some pupils told me that the text and all the clicking through it was too much for them, […] that it would be much better for them if it had a simpler structure.’

(Keira)

There are several valuable takeaways for potential designers of nonlinear educational resources. First, it is recommended to keep the story structure rather simple, while pupils should always be made aware of where exactly they are located within this structure. Likewise, they should always know how much content is ahead of them, so that they can adjust their time management accordingly. Orientation elements (such as a map, progress bar, table of contents, etc.—examples of which can be seen in Figure 6) can help with this.

Second, if possible, pupils should be able to move freely within the story structure, including backwards (although it should be noted that this is not always possible due to the setting of variables in the story script).

Use of digitized cultural heritage. Another widely discussed point was the use of digitized cultural heritage in the resources. The participants unanimously agreed that primary historical sources have the potential to become a very valuable part of the educational process if used wisely and in relation to the topic of the resource. They particularly emphasized that authentic materials, such as old photographs, newspaper articles, or archival documents, can be of great help in forming one’s own idea about given historical periods and events.

‘[…] the pupils liked the work with the documents. Either embedded texts or authentic photos. They said that [the documents] were very well chosen, that they illustrated the situation. […] and they immediately saw authentically what they were supposed to imagine or what it was about.’

(Eithne)

‘[…] when we talk about that period of time, your ability to understand how it all worked and looked like at that time is basically minimal or influenced to a certain extent by what you saw, for example in a movie, or what they read, but that concrete idea is missing […] so it’s definitely good when they come across those materials.’

(Calanthe)

‘It’s basically the theme that helps me grasp more general topics, for example the fact that jokes about women [from the past] are […] often beyond the limit of something that one would be able to laugh at today.’

(Eyck)

‘[…] it is also beneficial for them, [..] to work with the primary sources that they have to read, analyze, interpret… Which is something they have to do for their final exam as well.’

(Gerhart)

‘So, because each era is actually manifested in the written press in different way, therefore [pupils] can better empathize with that era, […] and can actually better understand that [the social phenomena] were really all-encompassing, that it was not just one person, but the whole society.’

(Cahir)

These responses indicate that teachers recognize the digitized cultural heritage as an inseparable part of educational resources, regardless of whether they play the role of simple props in the story (to help pupils to “see [the content] authentically”), or are interacted with by the pupils. In any case, they perceive the presence of these materials very strongly. For the designer, this means that these materials should not be handled lightly when creating an educational resource; on the contrary, their purpose in the particular resource should always be thought through.

Novelty and unusualness of the digitized content. A relatively large proportion of teachers admitted that even though they try to familiarize pupils with primary sources in their classes, it is not always easy for them to search for these sources or think of ways to involve them in teaching. Therefore, they valued these resources as something that the pupils do not normally encounter.

‘[…] it was a nice diversification for them; basically, we do not work with digitized documents in the art classes, […] so they praised this aspect very much.’

(Shani)

‘As the pages are scanned, they see what today’s young people often do not [see]. They see exactly the graphics, they see the font, […] the illustrations.’

(Sabrina)

‘I think the use of old newspapers and magazines, for example, is fine… And it is true that some of the examples […] from those old magazines, as well as the articles, were very comprehensive, so the pupils would probably not normally read them, but this way they can familiarise themselves with the way they were written.’

(Emhyr)

The fact that working with digitized cultural heritage in classes is an unfamiliar experience for both teachers and pupils means that the resources should be designed to be inclusive and to make work with them as intuitive and simple as possible. Therefore, the instructional guide plays an important role in lesson design, as some teachers may need more detailed instructions on how to work with the resources in their classes.

Multimediality. Another notable theme that emerged from the respondents’ remarks was the importance of the heterogeneity of the digitized materials used (i.e., not only digitized texts, but also photos, images, maps, videos, audio recordings, etc.). Additionally, the teachers appreciated their presence, and even called for more of the interactive exercises created in H5P.

‘[…] I also like the balance of both the visual materials and the fact that there are poems that they can listen to, as well as the activities.’

(Crach)

‘[…] more options were used to give them the image of the whole story—the statements and the soundscape, I definitely think it was more attractive than something they would only have to read.’

(Meve)

‘[…] such a variety that I look at something and there are more [types of media], so I think that it is better for the pupils than if it is just an uniform text.’

(Margarita)

‘The pupils requested more practical tasks. [They said] that there was too much theory. As a teacher, I don’t think it was too much. I think it was enough. […] However, there could be […] more of those tasks there, e.g., to recognize the right argument or the wrong argument.’

(Regis)

As one of the goals of the newly designed resources was to demonstrate the richness of the digitized cultural heritage, it is not surprising that the teachers took notice and appreciated the diversity of the media. According to McLellan [24], various media “add power and resonance” (p. 70) to the stories, while other authors [8,9,10,11] emphasize the presence of a specific layer of digitized objects, above which it is possible to create interactions that are not available with analog sources (in our case, we achieved this by linking resources to the H5P application, as seen in Figure 4). The pilot testing, therefore, confirmed that this aspect of working with digitized cultural heritage was considered very important by the respondents, and hence should be kept in mind during further creation of similar educational resources.

Limits on the use of digitized cultural heritage. However, some teachers had reservations about the length of some passages or there being too many digitized materials, which they perceived as potentially overwhelming for pupils, and/or too time consuming for a regular class (which is usually 45 min long).

‘I saw a lot of text [t]here, and as I know my pupils […], the longer the text, the more it discourages them […]. So, I think it should be a reasonable length…’

(Francesca)

‘[…] some of the passages were probably longer than they needed to be, and I would probably give a little less example of the periodic press, […]. For me, as a person who likes history, it is great, I could happily go through it for X hours, but I think that for use in the class that is actually designed for 45 min, there is an unnecessary amount of it.’

(Emhyr)

‘I would definitely let them explore [the topic] more. It is a very interesting area and the pupils seemed to enjoy it. I would spend more time browsing under less time pressure.’

(Tissaia)

Therefore, it is important to note that, when creating an educational resource, the possibilities and limits of the target group, both temporal and cognitive, must be taken into account.

5.2. Research on Pupils

The quantitative study among the pupils showed that they were, like the teachers, rather satisfied with their interaction with the educational resources.

As seen in the Figure 7, most of the respondents (60%) indicated that they were able to effectively form their own idea about the topic after working with the educational resource, while about a third (36%) were able to do so partially. Only 4% were barely able to do so.

The Figure 8 shows that most of the respondents (78%) welcomed the incorporation of authentic materials into the resources, as they helped them understand the topics better. About a fifth of the respondents did not work with period materials in any way (13%) or considered them unnecessary (4%). Furthermore, 5% of respondents expressed a negative opinion about authentic materials and claimed that they made it more difficult for them to understand the topic.

In the last question, the pupils were asked to describe their experience of working with the resource in one sentence. Apart from more generic responses (usually pointing out acquiring new knowledge or general enjoyment of work with the resources), four key themes emerged from the responses: engagement with the digitized cultural heritage, storytelling approach, role-playing aspect, and influence of the resources on their values and attitudes.

Engagement with the digitized cultural heritage. The engagement with the digitized cultural heritage was one of the core elements of the newly developed educational resources. The respondents mostly emphasized new perspectives gained by examining authentic text documents (e.g., through contemporary media coverage of certain historical events, eventually their comparison with current discourse) and an opportunity to see the world through the eyes of their ancestors through old photographs and paintings.

‘I was very surprised by the way the information about the disaster was communicated. This is definitely new […] to me.’

‘More information about the case […] and understanding of news and texts from that time.’

‘Various interpretations of the event from different media, at different times. They make us ask if the media are truly independent.’

‘I was able to see what the places in Brno I know looked like before.’

‘A view of the world of that time through the eyes of contemporary paintings […] Working with authentic materials can make work much easier and clarify a lot.’

Just like the teachers, the pupils confirmed that work with digitized cultural heritage is beneficial and enjoyable for them. Moreover, it is clear from their statements that they do not just expect to be able to passively browse through the sources, but to be able to actively work with them, analyze them, and compare them with each other as well as with the contemporary sources.

Storytelling approach. The storytelling form of the resources was a second key theme that notably emerged from the respondents’ responses. The pupils noticed the storytelling approach, and their statements confirmed that stories of specific people (whether real or fictitious) helped them understand given historical or social contexts better. Some of them specifically pointed out the benefits of the storytelling approach compared to the traditional one.

‘I have a better idea of how the smuggling worked. I knew what exile literature was, but specific stories helped me better understand what was happening around it.’

‘I think similar personal (albeit fictitious) stories help us to understand historical events, because there is a difference between an empathetically formulated text and a technical text from a textbook that we have already read a thousand times.’

‘[…] that even such a complicated subject can be sufficiently explained through a story.’

These comments are consistent with what we know from the literature and what we have learned from the teachers. In general, stories seem to be perceived as an engaging and effective teaching method that helps to clarify contexts which might otherwise remain hidden from the pupils.

Role-playing aspect. In connection with the form of the story, some respondents also mentioned the role-playing aspect as an opportunity to foster empathy by putting themselves in the shoes of the characters in the story and making decisions for them. However, it is interesting that, in contrast to the teachers, the pupils also saw role-playing as an opportunity to gain practical skills and prepare for potential future similar situations.

‘I was able to take on the role of a resident […]. Now I better understand how people lived back then and what they experienced.’

‘If I ever find myself in a situation like Adam, I will definitely remember some things related to this topic and maybe make a different decision.’

It follows that, to maximize the impact of a story on the pupils, it should include at least some role-playing elements, be it a role choice, an ability to influence the direction of the story, or more advanced gameplay elements such as collecting points, gathering inventory items, or combat mechanics.

Influence of values and attitudes. The last theme emerging from the survey results was the way in which the resources promoted values and attitudes in pupils, especially open-mindedness, respect for others, solidarity, social and environmental responsibility, etc. The responses often included keywords such as “realization”, “awareness”, “appreciation”, “gratitude”, etc.

‘Some things are not as clear at first glance as they appear. People should discuss problems together more, listen to each other, and try to find a compromise.’

‘We should fight against discrimination, not only religious discrimination—[we should] treat everyone with respect. […] We should definitely learn from the past and not allow similar things to happen again.’

‘[I was] shocked at how women were discriminated against, but also happy that things have been slowly but surely changing since then. […] I am even more aware and grateful for the freedom and opportunities we have in education today.’

‘Travelling has more consequences than we can imagine, and while travelling is fun, we have to think about […] others. […] Every culture is unique and there are many ways to explore them.’

These results suggest that the potential of the storytelling approach to support the development of values and attitudes should not be underestimated. The choice of appropriate topics combined with authentic stories (illustrated by period documents) can support pupils in changing their attitudes towards certain historical and social phenomena and possibly influence their future behavior.

6. Discussion

The digital storytelling form [40,41] proved to be liked by both the pupils and the teachers, but, more importantly, the teachers found the storytelling more appealing than traditional frontal teaching [39]. Sagri et al. [42] (p. 97) commented on this form:

“Nowadays, people and students at all educational levels in the developed world are surrounded by multiple electronic media and are familiar with a variety of pictures, video, and information from early childhood. As it proceeds in parallel with fast technological and societal evolution, the educational process tries to smoothly adapt new educational methods without abandoning traditional teaching and moving away from its main aim: the establishment of knowledge.”

In our study, this adaptation is represented by an essential perspective on the development of the educational resources—it was necessary to work with images and other multimedia in a way that would lead to education and, at the same time, be attractive to pupils. It was confirmed that a well-chosen theme (in our case, relying on design thinking methods) allows the story to anchor effectively in the socio-cultural field of the pupils [43], and promotes immersion and imagination through the story. However, unlike Hurlburt and Voas [44], we did not work with the pupils’ own memories.

Using this form leads to the pupil becoming (as our research data highlight) an active participant in the story and not just a passive spectator [45]. This area has been the focus of many studies [46] that highlight the satisfaction [47,48] or motivation [49] of pupils associated with the activity.

To some extent, our approach builds on the project of Wood et al. [50], who tried to work with mobile games in libraries, which led to positive results. In some ways, our resources can also be considered educational digital games, although they have a strong literary and narrative dimension [51,52]. According to both groups of respondents, the creation of such objects is educationally relevant and leads to desirable educational effects [42].

A significant finding was that the pupils were active in the process of influencing the continuation of the story [44,48], whether in the form of role play [53], simple personalization, or adaptation of content [54,55]. Autonomy in the learning process is generally perceived as important [56,57,58].

Teachers’ feedback on the resources often referred to orientation and the general setup of the user interface, a topic widely discussed in the literature [59,60,61]. From this point of view, the key role of user testing should be emphasized [62,63]. Despite repeated tests of the resources, teachers still continued to provide suggestions to make the story interface more usable and user-friendly. It can be said that a research-through-design and design-through-research approach leads to each innovation opening up space for new, more profound feedback that improves the user experience.

Our research focused on working with resources that use digitized cultural heritage [64] to work with high school pupils [62,65]. It is crucial for our conception that working with digitized cultural heritage is not reduced to simply making original artefacts accessible and preserving them, but that we look for ways to work with objects in digital form in a fundamentally different way than working with the physical originals would allow. Teachers appreciated that pupils had access to such resources; pupils perceived the link to authenticity within the stories as essential.

Key Recommendations for Designers of Nonlinear Interactive Stories

One of the objectives of the user testing of the newly developed educational resources (besides answering the research questions) was also to verify the applied procedures and create a list of recommendations for designers of potential future nonlinear interactive stories created inTwine2. Several principles related to different aspects of the resources emerged from the qualitative research among teachers. These principles are summarized in

Table 2. Summary of the key recommendations and related participants’ statements.

Stories based on reality	Description	Retelling stories that really happened (or could have happened) has a greater impact on the pupils than fiction.
	Statements	‘[…] it was very important to them that it was not a fiction, but […] that it was actually a real way of abusing that thinking.’ (Sigismund) ‘[…] they obviously read it with interest, because it is the individual persons who are interesting, you can picture them; most of our pupils identify as girls, so Anna’s story is interesting for them, they can project their own experiences into it.’ (Rience) ‘It will make them realize [w]hat an effort it must have cost [the women]. […] Not only the arguments for and against [female education] but also for them as pupils, how much effort she had to make and what risk it entailed for her future life.’ (Fringilla)
Role-playing	Description	Active engagement of the reader in the story and their ability to make decisions about the character’s actions.
	Statements	‘I like that they can experience the story from both sides and that they can try to understand the behavior of those people…’ (Nenneke) ‘It is also important to see how the pupils think someone else would behave. […] how do they understand what [the character] should look like, how he should behave, what his values are, etc.’ (Margarita) ‘I liked the division of roles, and […] the discussion as it was then, whether it would change the result if they decided differently…’ (Emhyr)
Digitized objects as part of the story	Description	Illustrating a story with authentic materials, such as newspaper articles, photographs, diary entries, maps, etc., helps to create a better picture of the context and circumstances of the story.
	Statements	‘[…] the pupils liked the work with the documents. Either embedded texts or authentic photos. They said that [the documents] were very well chosen, that they illustrated the situation. […] and they immediately saw authentically what they were supposed to imagine or what it was about.’ (Eithne) ‘So, because each era is actually manifested in the written press in different way, therefore [pupils] can better empathize with that era, […] and can actually better understand that [the social phenomena] were really all-encompassing, that it was not just one person, but the whole society.’ (Cahir)
Multimediality	Description	Making use of diversified media forms (text, images, audio, video, etc.) so that pupils with different learning styles or special educational needs can access the same information in different ways.
	Statements	‘[…] I also like the balance of both the visual materials and the fact that there are poems that they can listen to…’ (Crach) ‘[…] more options were used to give them the image of the whole story—the statements and the soundscape, I definitely think it was more attractive than something they would only have to read.’ (Meve) ‘[…] such a variety that I look at something and there are more [types of media], so I think that it is better for the pupils than if it is just an uniform text.’ (Margarita)
Interactions with the digitized objects	Description	The digitized objects should not be mere props in the stories, but it should be possible to work with them analytically and creatively.
	Statements	‘[…] it is also beneficial for them, […] to work with the primary sources that they have to read, analyze, interpret…’ (Gerhart) ‘The pupils requested more practical tasks. […] there could be […] more of those tasks there, e.g., to recognize the right argument or the wrong argument.’ (Regis) ‘I liked some of the tasks, […] but there could be more verification tasks for them to […] find out if they understood it well, if they looked for the right elements there.’ (Fringilla)
Orientation and control of the progression of the story	Description	The resources should have mechanisms that solve problems with orientation and control of progress within the story, such as saving points, progress bars, tables of contents, etc.
	Statements	‘[…] there is also a bit of uncertainty in the fact that they don’t know how long they will be working with [the resource], so they might sometimes tend to skip lines or apply this kind of accelerated reading, because they don’t know if there was still material waiting for them for the next 20 or 5 [minutes].’ (Meve) ‘They would welcome a progress bar on each slide.’ (Zoltan)
Adaptation to the target group	Description	The target group of the resource should always be kept in mind. If it is to be used in formal education, it must be adapted to formal rules, such as the time allocation and thematic inclusion in the school education plan.
	Statements	‘I saw a lot of text [t]here, and as I know my pupils […], the longer the text, the more it discourages them […]. So, I think it should be a reasonable length…’ (Francesca) ‘[…] some of the passages were probably longer than they needed to be […] I think that for use in the class that is actually designed for 45 min, there is an unnecessary amount of it.’ (Emhyr)
Support for teachers	Description	Each resource should include an instructional guide that explains educational objectives and provides teachers with guidance on how to work with the resource and how to reflect on its content with pupils.
	Statements	‘[…] it is important for someone in their first year of teaching, who has not encountered such topics in their practice yet.’ (Philippa) ‘First, I went through the instructional guide, and […] I immediately thought to myself yes, that’s it […] Yes, it helped me [to] get an idea of what is actually expected from me.’ (Keira) ‘Yes, it was just so well described there, actually, what sources does it come from, how to work with the resource…’ (Yarpen)

, together with examples of supportive statements from the participants.

7. Conclusions

The goal of our study was to find answers to three research questions using a research-by-design methodology. For this purpose, we created 16 nonlinear interactive multimedia stories in Twine2 and tested each in three different high schools. We gathered information from pupils via questionnaires about their feelings as they moved through the material and from teachers via face-to-face interviews, which were recorded, transcribed, and further analyzed. With this approach, two goals were pursued: improving the objects (design through research), and answering the three research questions.

Can the Twine2 application be used to create nonlinear interactive multimedia stories based on working with digitized cultural heritage in a high school environment? This question can be answered with an unequivocal affirmative. The resources have received positive reception and evaluation from both pupils and teachers. Our research has clearly shown that developing such objects is not easy and requires repeated testing and checking with a target group. Therefore, it can be claimed that it is possible to create educational resources based on digitized cultural heritage using Twine2. The fact that Twine2 is an open-source tool opens up promising prospects for the widespread use and collaboration between libraries, museums, and schools.

How do high school pupils evaluate Twine2 resources? Pupils’ feedback emphasizes the immersive nature of the resources created in Twine2. Our research has shown that the combination of story, role-playing, and thoughtful use of digitized cultural heritage in Twine2 allows for the creation of educational objects that not only transmit knowledge or information, but, more importantly, provide for working with attitude change and experiential pedagogy. Moreover, the degree of story immersion is sufficient for attitude changes or the formation of specific experiences.

How do high school teachers evaluate Twine2 resources? Teachers also positively evaluated the resources created in Twine2. According to their statements, the resources allowed a personalized active learning journey for each pupil, which is impossible in conventional frontal teaching. Teachers also appreciated learning through role-playing and storytelling as an effective educational method, which they do not have enough space for in more traditional forms in the classroom. For teachers, it is essential that these objects allow pupils to work with digitized cultural heritage, which they perceive as essential for understanding the taught content. Moreover, teachers’ reflections say that pupils enjoy working with these educational resources.

Further research (linked to the limitations of our study) could look more deeply into pupils’ learning behaviors and experiences while working with the resources. The data from the questionnaires allow only a basic description, which could be extended with qualitative research methods, such as focus groups. At the same time, our data suggest that pupils’ sub-experiences are linked to the specific processing of a particular learning resource. Greater homogenization of the provided resources could lead to a better understanding of how interactions with different types of resources differ and how to design them more appropriately. At the same time, we see it as a significant challenge to find ways to encourage teachers and pupils to actively engage with open data and open software-based materials themselves. Another way to extend the knowledge gained would be to research alternative tools for creating nonlinear interactive multimedia stories.