Undoubtedly, the effort to constantly modernize the educational process, making it more attractive and efficient for students, was and remains of great importance, receiving outstanding attention from all involved actors in schooling practices. An innovative and multidimensional way of renewing learning procedures is the incorporation of “new technology.” There has been a lot of discussion and research that has proven the usefulness of digital tools in schooling, turning the whole process into a new, exciting experience that engages students ^{[1][2][3][4][5]}[1,2,3,4,5]. However, some educators, especially the ones coming from fields of theoretical studies, seem skeptical and wary of the latest tendencies while maintaining traditional teaching methods. To these doubts comes the answer to the research on the effectiveness of technological means integration in teaching philological courses [4]. The diversity of the world, as expressed through traditions and events, is endangered by the rapid pace of modern life, technological and economic development, and globalization ^[5][6][5,6]. That is why the entire research community must protect classical studies and cultural heritage by understanding and integrating dedicated digital tools without falling, neither into overwhelming haste nor to groundless hesitations or unjustified doubts.

The hesitation can be explained by the lack of specialized knowledge and associated experience, causing inadequate digital literacy, which can further trigger inhibitory defense mechanisms. This denial attribute might also fade the teachers’ interest in keeping up with the new blended learning trends, neglecting the consideration of graphical and user-friendly tools and services, mainly delivered through light-weight drag-and-drop interactions ^{[1][2][3][4][7]}[1,2,3,4,7]. The current project aims at demonstrating the availability of media assets and interactive learning tools that educators can easily, quickly, and effectively deploy, even if they do not possess developing skills. Engaging the schooling community in seeking modern methods of digitally assisted learning is a challenge that, among others, will familiarize both teachers and students with the recent technological developments. Such a course can bring forward a multitude of innovative approaches and practices to meet the different needs of various educational topics and audiences.

The main hypothesis is that interactive media have not been fully productive yet in the educational process, especially in cases where teachers lack media authoring expertise and learning software fluency. Related findings on the adoption of game-based studying, gamification practices, online learning and management systems, and transmedia storytelling approaches have shown a significant impact on the schooling procedures and outcomes, including the cases of traditional, social or humanoid disciplines, such as history, language, art, culture, sports, and others ^{[1][2][3][4][5][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]}[1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Transmedia education and blended learning methods have also emerged and, in many cases, have dominated as new pedagogy trends ^{[7][18][19][20][21][22][23]}[7,18,19,20,21,22,23]. However, less progress is observed in scenarios like the one dealing with, i.e., meeting the listed conditions of reduced technological expertise and familiarity with digital/non-linear storytelling [24]. The current research aimed at elaborating on the above perspectives through the logical user-centered interactive design (LUCID) principles and component-based software engineering (CBSE) models ^{[5][24][25][26][27][28]}[5,24,25,26,27,28], making productive, less complicated and/or accessible authoring services and reusable media assets to value audience engagement and enhance the mediated learning experience. Hence, the stated hypotheses about the availability of user-friendly storytelling tools that non-experts and non-developers can operate in learning are questioned and verified.

2. DigiRelatal Storytelling in Educed Work and Targeted Innovation

Emanating from the fact that younger people are frequently involved in playing digital games (on a computer or mobile device), serious gaming and gamification practices have emerged to be utilized in the educational context ^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][29]}[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,29]. Teaching becomes efficient when implicating entertainment as part of the process, creating comfort and motivation for the students, therefore engaging them in the learning procedures. The fundamental contribution of fun is to provide relaxation, willingness, and inspiration. Comfort activates the class to take things in more successfully, while motivation triggers participants to do their best without bitterness ^[28][29][30][28,29,30]. While gaming features and potentials have been analyzed in different theoretical views and perspectives ^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], their main advantages lay in their amusing character, stimulating users to participate actively and enjoy the offered interactions, thus making the most of their engagement. Such utilities can be vital components of digital storytelling and, particularly in transmedia learning, keeping students’ interests undiminished. They can have either the form of serious games, used to fuel knowledge acquisition and testing in more pleasant ways (within a game world), or as gamification paradigms, borrowing gaming features (control, challenge, curiosity, leveling, leaderboards, etc.) to trigger healthy competition and emulation between participants (even if a digital game is not involved at all). As further documented in the following paragraphs, such modalities can be combined in multiple ways within a transmedia narration, motivating users’ attention while also augmenting the deployed communications into richer media experiences. The entertainment industry has found new ways to engage the public by merging media with marketing and amusement strategies. In addition, this content delivery approach has been extended to the educational process. The range of phenomena referred to by the term “transmedia storytelling” includes many different aspects that combine the new cultural context, social media, the exchange of information on the Internet, promotion and dissemination campaigns, and user connectivity models ^[31][32][31,32]. Among others, the use of multiple media can encompass cross- and transmedia access or interactions, thus linking audiences in rich media experiences and collaborations of shared and semantically enhanced digital assets ^[32][33][34][32,33,34]. Such features are considered favorable within the targeted blended learning framework, allowing for the combination of the availability of tools and resources on the one hand with the non-linear storylines and the engaging navigation/interfaces on the other. In the same context, computer gaming could become even more practical for training and teaching, representing alternative/advanced multimedia applications that mix education with challenge and entertainment. Thus, learning becomes more enjoyable, effective, and efficient ^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][28][29][30]}[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,28,29,30]. The most exciting part is that transmedia storytelling can syndicate the serious gaming advantages with the rest of the technology-assisted learning benefits in an organic and integrated infotainment adventure. Learning by example is another paradigm that has gained popularity with time. Many users prefer developing their skills based on multimedia content, which encloses the archetypal audiovisual presentation and perception of information through which human beings are accustomed to communicating with each other (and learning) ^[25][27][25,27]. Hence, this type of mediated interaction is considered more informative and vivid, so it is advantageous to acquire knowledge through practice without needing guidance from theory textbooks. At the same time, the use of learning platforms facilitates the process of memorizing the interface while also making use of automated suggestions, customization, and users’ and/or topics’ adaptations. Story-driven content (e.g., novels, movies, computer games, etc.) is efficiently converted to diverse and interconnected media, easily digested by the audience. Diversified media nodes are involved as the informatory streams are sizably linked to transmedia ecosystems. They can offer alternative navigation routes, presenting subjects and topics from different angles, techniques, means of interaction and levels of complexity, thus allowing users to form their preferred path and pace of learning. Mobile devices enable users to receive time-, location-, and context-aware prompt information, while abundant sensing technologies activate various innovative services and an ambient co-existence between the digital and the physical worlds. For instance, mobile terminals can be viewed as interfaces to retrieve further (related) information when visiting a place, triggered by wireless sensors, quick response (QR) codes, or photos of characteristic landmarks that phone cameras can capture. In the same context, they can augment the physical world by superimposing additional multimedia or 3D content onto paper-printed material, i.e., maps, books, newspapers. A characteristic example in this direction is the augmented reality book (AR-book), a trend that attempts to restore the relation of readers to the printed media without lacking access to web and multimedia resources [32]. These tools can be utilized in self-learning and experiential learning modes, including teamwork-exploring activities where gaming elements can also bind (e.g., treasure hunt games). Audiovisual narrations are further offered as non-linear storytelling through desktop terminals or extended reality (XR) experiences, conveying the central part of the learning resources to be comprehended ^{[32][33][34][35][36][37][38]}[32,33,34,35,36,37,38]. More explicitly, storytelling is a messaging system that reveals a narrative or creates an experience through various environments and interfaces, activating all students’ senses in the lesson process to successfully transmit information. This narrative approach becomes effective because it uses a variety of means and tools that trigger the receiver’s attention to receive information. It achieves this by using diverse media channels and/or technology platforms that retain their own characteristics. Still, multiple media can tell different stories, though they explore a basic or common theme that one can experience through multi-angled storyline perspectives. It is also essential to consider the lifestyle and the habits of the receivers and the environment to adapt to the needs of the concerned learning interaction ^[31][39][31,39]. Transmedia storytelling involves creating a new set of interconnected tales/events that go beyond traditional narrations and require new user engagement terms. These stories manifest themselves less as unique plots, viewed mainly by readers and viewers as architectural portrayals of universes inhabited by many characters, articulating complex temporalities and conflicting perspectives. Transmedia stories can be filtered through different prisms, with changing narrators and transformations in focus ^{[18][19][31][32][39]}[18,19,31,32,39]. Combined with gaming and gamification elements, storytelling interactions shape the assumption of blended learning effectiveness compared to typical schooling. Undoubtedly, traditional learning in its simplest form, namely using textbooks, whiteboards, human instructors, and face-to-face classroom communication, seems to achieve its goal of conveying skill or knowledge over time. However, it provides limited engagement, relying exclusively on physical communication with the teacher and classmates, thus being inadequate, in many cases, to keep the students’ concentration and fulfill its learning aims [40]. Yet, the traditional way’s effectiveness, being solid and stable within class environments, can be further enhanced and assigned a continuous value by combining primary gaming features, such as fantasy, control, challenge, curiosity, leveling, leaderboards, etc. ^[1][29][41][1,29,41]. It is worth noting that digital storytelling succeeds in bequeathing knowledge, experiences, performances, customs, artifacts, and testimonies from one generation to the next, thus shaping common educational cultures and bonding the communities [16]. Using interactive functions, the provision of experiences with enriched media is achieved, ensuring the steady growth of literacy, and learning mechanisms, thus augmenting the teaching experience, especially for the traditional disciplines that are less attached to the technology. Overall, technology offers alternative routes to practical training activities, exhibiting increased engagement prospects by utilizing digital media that younger people have been accustomed to (thus, making them feel more comfortable in their own digital world). In all cases and especially when quality and/or creative teachers are involved, these tools offer a multitude of different options to trigger students’ attention and active participation. The institutionalization of blended learning models takes advantage of a range of traditional face-to-face teaching with online activities, offered through a diverse mix of educational resources (seminars, lectures, self-regulated study, mediated communication, and interactive multimedia simulations) [42]. In sum, it combines the advantages of both classroom and digital learning, offering ease of use, removing time and space restrictions, increasing student efficiency, and extending comprehension capacities in the physical interaction with the participants. Indeed, research has shown that well-designed blended learning enhances the experience and extends thinking through messaging technology [43]. For instance, using online educational videos to supplement physical lessons can substantially fuel students’ motivation and learning outcomes [44]. However, there is a lack of agreement on the ways that various institutions define, measure, and apply blended learning [45], an issue that somewhat increases creativity and freedom of choice. Nonetheless, the pandemic COVID-19 situation has made digital media and technological solutions a necessity in the educational process, with higher education students exhibiting remarkably adapting and engaging attitudes [46]. At the same time, well-designed examples can positively impact technology acceptance, further enhancing learning potentials by individualizing practice [47]. Nowadays, set plans gaining popularity rely on a combination of multiple teaching methods to maximize effectiveness [48]. Overall, blended learning seems to be a promising solution that has attracted the interest of many researchers and educators, making the most of the various elements to design frameworks that are equally effective for students and teachers ^[48][49][48,49]. Such technology-enhanced learning methods have become very popular and effective when it comes to disciplines involving digital technology ^{[14][15][16][17][25]}[14,15,16,17,25] and contemporary media literacy needs ^[1][32][1,32], which demand multidisciplinary topics [2], cultural heritage projects stimulating audience entertainment and participation ^{[6][8][16][24]}[6,8,16,24] and serious games triggering infotainment and experiential education to elementary school users and older groups ^{[3][5][29][30]}[3,5,29,30]. Popular examples of game-based and blended learning approaches are frequent in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) ^[50][51][52][50,51,52], where art is also gaining popularity and acceptance, forming the STEAM education paradigm (as an extension to STEM) [53]. To the best of ouresearchers' knowledge, related efforts are limited in such an integrated manner for teaching classical topics, such as the “Odyssey” [4].