Carlos Vincent Ruiz urged educators to rethink literature instruction in the digital age, saying stories today are no longer confined to printed pages but are increasingly experienced through text, visuals, sound, hyperlinks and interaction.
Ruiz, an MAEd candidate for English and Literature from St. John’s Institute and La Consolacion College Bacolod, delivered the plenary presentation “Stories That Click: Digifiction as Multimodal Literary Meaning-Making Through Creative Agency, Interactivity, and Scaffolding” during the 9th International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research.
His phenomenological study explored how students construct meaning when literary works become interactive digital experiences. Ruiz said the shift from reading to experiencing, from consuming to creating, and from text-centered interpretation to participatory meaning-making presents an important challenge for teachers of literature.
“If literacy itself has evolved beyond the printed page, should literature instruction continue to rely solely on traditional modes of reading and interpretation?” Ruiz asked in his presentation.
The study used transcendental phenomenology to examine students’ experiences in creating digifiction, or digital fiction, as a multimodal literary output. Findings showed that students became deeply engaged in the creative process as they developed stories using images, sounds, hyperlinks, navigation systems and interactive reader choices.
Ruiz identified several themes from the study, including recursive engagement, identity as creative becoming, creativity as coordinated meaning-making, collaboration as shared creative agency, and scaffolding as productive structure.
Participants described the process as exciting, challenging and rewarding. Some said that while they were familiar with digital fiction as players or users, creating their own stories gave them a deeper appreciation of literature. Others emphasized how images, sounds and hyperlinks helped them express meaning beyond words.
Ruiz said the findings suggest that digifiction allows students to see themselves not only as readers but as designers of literary experiences. He also stressed that multimodality should not be treated as decoration or supplementary material, but as an essential part of narrative construction.
The study further reexamined Cognitive Load Theory, Design Thinking and multimodal literacy. Ruiz argued that learning in digifiction does not come merely from simplifying tasks, but from organizing complexity into meaningful engagement. He also described design thinking in digifiction as recursive experience design, where students repeatedly revise ideas, test narrative paths and refine multimodal elements.
As an output of the study, Ruiz proposed a Digifiction-Based Instructional Framework and Teacher Toolkit to guide teachers in using interactive digital storytelling for literature education.
“The future of literature education is not merely about reading texts,” Ruiz said. “It is about creating spaces where meaning can be explored, negotiated and experienced.”