Multimodal Technologies and Interaction

The assessment of teachers’ digital competence has become a key challenge for educational systems seeking to foster effective multimodal, online, and blended learning environments. This study examines the level of self-perceived digital competence and educators’ readiness to design, implement, and support multimodal learning experiences across all educational levels in Galicia, Spain. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using the DigCompEdu Check-In questionnaire with a sample of 1550 teachers. The findings reveal a generally intermediate level of digital competence across educational levels, with significant differences between educational stages in several dimensions of the DigCompEdu framework. Teachers reported stronger competences in professional engagement and digital resources, while lower levels were observed in learner empowerment and the facilitation of students’ digital competence. These results suggest that, although teachers possess a solid foundation for the use of digital technologies, important challenges remain regarding their preparedness to promote active participation, autonomy, and digital engagement in multimodal learning environments. The dimensions most closely associated with the design and facilitation of multimodal educational experiences, particularly digital resources, teaching and learning, learner empowerment, and the development of students’ digital competence, highlight the need for targeted professional development initiatives. The study provides a comprehensive baseline for evaluating teachers’ readiness for multimodal online and blended learning before the full implementation of the European Digital Education Action Plan 2021–2027. Consequently, it offers valuable evidence for assessing the future impact of European policies aimed at strengthening digital education and supporting innovative multimodal teaching practices.

We conducted an exploratory evaluation of multimodal LLM performance on a maze-solving and path-drawing task. The task required the model to find and draw, on a supplied image of a maze, a path from the starting point to the exit without crossing the walls. We tested proprietary models Grok, Gemini-3, ChatGPT-4o, and ChatGPT-5.2 on 20 mazes (10 with a path from the start to the exit and 10 without one). Each problem was presented five times in random order. We also tested the effect of language by presenting separate prompts in English and Croatian, resulting in a total of 200 trials per model (100 trials per language). We found that only ChatGPT-5.2 consistently produced correct answers in both verbal and visual modalities. We further examined drawing errors made by other models, such as visual hallucinations (inventing a new, unrelated maze), failing to connect the starting point to the exit, crossing the walls, and walking on the walls. We also conducted an exploratory study on the LLMs’ metacognitive judgments about their performance.

Museums increasingly employ digital playful experiences to engage younger audiences, yet designing for both engagement and deeper historical understanding remains challenging. This paper presents Letters from the Past, a sequenced multimodal museum learning experience designed to foster historical empathy among middle-school students. The experience combined three interconnected phases: (1) digital storytelling through historical letters and contextual information, (2) a mobile scavenger hunt game linking narratives to museum objects, and (3) collaborative creative writing in which students composed responses from historically situated perspectives. We report findings from an exploratory mixed-method field study with 37 students aged 12–15, using questionnaires, interviews, observations, and analysis of collaboratively written letters. The results indicate that the multimodal playful sequence supported high levels of engagement, collaborative meaning-making, and emotionally grounded interpretations of the past. Students reported high levels of engagement and perceived learning, while interviews and observations highlighted enjoyment, collaboration, object discovery, and engagement with historical content. The collaboratively written letters provided qualitative evidence of historical perspective-taking and affective connection: students adopted historically situated voices, incorporated historical and material elements, and produced imaginative yet historically plausible elaborations of the scenarios. These findings document forms of engagement, meaning-making, and historical empathy emerging within the complete experience. The paper discusses how the observed patterns relate to the theoretically motivated progression from narrative encounter through material exploration to collaborative reinterpretation and considers implications for the design of multimodal museum learning experiences.