Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities

Abstract Smart learning environments (SLEs) utilize technological advancements to facilitate effective, engaging, and personalized learning experiences. They depend on sensors and advanced connectivity to gather information and make informed decisions. Multisensory Environments (MSEs) naturally alig...

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Main Authors: Giulia Cosentino, Mirko Gelsomini, Kshitij Sharma, Michail Giannakos
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2025-08-01
Series:Smart Learning Environments
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-025-00402-4
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author Giulia Cosentino
Mirko Gelsomini
Kshitij Sharma
Michail Giannakos
author_facet Giulia Cosentino
Mirko Gelsomini
Kshitij Sharma
Michail Giannakos
author_sort Giulia Cosentino
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Smart learning environments (SLEs) utilize technological advancements to facilitate effective, engaging, and personalized learning experiences. They depend on sensors and advanced connectivity to gather information and make informed decisions. Multisensory Environments (MSEs) naturally align with and enhance the capabilities of SLEs offering new opportunities to enhance learning effectively, and engage children with stimulating educational experiences leveraging different interaction modalities. Investigating how children interact with these new systems is important to design educational technologies. However, limited research has been conducted to evaluate the role of interaction modalities in moderating the relationship between students’ experience and their learning outcomes in a MSE. We, therefore, tracked 175 students’ (aged 6-10) correctness rate to questions and their states through motion, heart rate, and electrodermal activity, obtaining their levels of fatigue, stress, engagement, emotional regulation, and anxiety. We then analysed the moderating role of five different interaction modalities ("card", "feet", "hands", "voice", "wand") on the relationship between correctness rate and states. The results of this in-situ study show that the relationship between student states and their performance is moderated by the interaction modalities, offering important design and theoretical implications on the role of the interaction modalities in the learning experience of students with an MSE. The contributions of this research benefit all stakeholders involved, including students who receive appropriate learning experiences, and practitioners who can make informed decisions on what interaction modalities to use to support the learning experience.
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institution Kabale University
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publishDate 2025-08-01
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series Smart Learning Environments
spelling doaj-art-e3a1a855d0204ae497dc821cc83034892025-08-20T03:46:23ZengSpringerOpenSmart Learning Environments2196-70912025-08-0112112810.1186/s40561-025-00402-4Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalitiesGiulia Cosentino0Mirko Gelsomini1Kshitij Sharma2Michail Giannakos3Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyDepartment of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyDepartment of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyDepartment of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyAbstract Smart learning environments (SLEs) utilize technological advancements to facilitate effective, engaging, and personalized learning experiences. They depend on sensors and advanced connectivity to gather information and make informed decisions. Multisensory Environments (MSEs) naturally align with and enhance the capabilities of SLEs offering new opportunities to enhance learning effectively, and engage children with stimulating educational experiences leveraging different interaction modalities. Investigating how children interact with these new systems is important to design educational technologies. However, limited research has been conducted to evaluate the role of interaction modalities in moderating the relationship between students’ experience and their learning outcomes in a MSE. We, therefore, tracked 175 students’ (aged 6-10) correctness rate to questions and their states through motion, heart rate, and electrodermal activity, obtaining their levels of fatigue, stress, engagement, emotional regulation, and anxiety. We then analysed the moderating role of five different interaction modalities ("card", "feet", "hands", "voice", "wand") on the relationship between correctness rate and states. The results of this in-situ study show that the relationship between student states and their performance is moderated by the interaction modalities, offering important design and theoretical implications on the role of the interaction modalities in the learning experience of students with an MSE. The contributions of this research benefit all stakeholders involved, including students who receive appropriate learning experiences, and practitioners who can make informed decisions on what interaction modalities to use to support the learning experience.https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-025-00402-4Multisensory environmentsInteraction modalitiesChildrenEducationLearningMultimodal data
spellingShingle Giulia Cosentino
Mirko Gelsomini
Kshitij Sharma
Michail Giannakos
Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
Smart Learning Environments
Multisensory environments
Interaction modalities
Children
Education
Learning
Multimodal data
title Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
title_full Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
title_fullStr Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
title_full_unstemmed Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
title_short Students’ experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments: the moderating role of interaction modalities
title_sort students experience and learning outcomes in multisensory environments the moderating role of interaction modalities
topic Multisensory environments
Interaction modalities
Children
Education
Learning
Multimodal data
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-025-00402-4
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