A New Era in Multimodal Learning Analytics: Twelve Core Commitments to Ground and Grow MMLA

Multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) has increasingly been a topic of discussion within the learning analytics community. The Society of Learning Analytics Research is home to the CrossMMLA Special Interest Group and regularly hosts workshops on MMLA during the Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI). In this paper, we articulate a set of 12 commitments that we believe are critical for creating effective MMLA innovations. Moreover, as MMLA grows in use, it is important to articulate a set of core commitments that can help guide both MMLA researchers and the broader learning analytics community. The commitments that we describe are deeply rooted in the origins of MMLA and also reflect the ways that MMLA has evolved over the past 10 years. We organize the 12 commitments in terms of (i) data collection, (ii) analysis and inference, and (iii) feedback and data dissemination and argue why these commitments are important for conducting ethical, high-quality MMLA research. Furthermore, in using the language of commitments, we emphasize opportunities for MMLA research to align with established qualitative research methodologies and important concerns from critical studies.

The evidence of impact and ethical considerations of Multimodal Learning Analytics: A Systematic Literature Review

There is a growing interest in the research and use of multimodal data in learning analytics. This paper presents a systematic literature review of multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) research to assess i) the available evidence of impact on learning outcomes in real-world contexts and ii) explore the extent to which ethical considerations are addressed. A few recent literature reviews argue for the promising value of multimodal data in learning analytics research. However, our understanding of the challenges associated with MMLA research from real-world teaching and learning environments is limited. To address this gap, this paper provides an overview of the evidence of impact and ethical considerations stemming from an analysis of the relevant MMLA research published in the last decade. The search of the literature resulted in 663 papers, of which 100 were included in the final synthesis. The results show that the evidence of real-world impact on learning outcomes is weak, and ethical aspects of MMLA work are rarely addressed. We discuss our results through the lenses of two theoretical frameworks for evidence of impact types and ethical dimensions of MMLA. We conclude that for MMLA to stay relevant and become part of mainstream education, future research should directly address the gaps identified in this review.

Uma abordagem de Multimodal Learning Analytics para identificação de habilidades de Pensamento Computacional

O pensamento computacional vem sendo discutido nos diversos ambientes educacionais. No entanto, os estudos apresentam que a avaliação das habilidades de PC estão direcionadas ao ensino de programação. Nossa pesquisa busca investigar como avaliar o desenvolvimento de habilidades de PC dos estudantes, com a utilização de Multimodal Learning Analytics na captura de elementos de aprendizagem para beneficiar o processo avaliativo.Link para o vídeo da apresentação: https://youtu.be/lMTlekkrqtQ

Designing Analytics for Collaboration Literacy and Student Empowerment

Collaboration has garnered global attention as an important skill for the 21st century. While researchers have been doing work on collaboration for nearly a century, many of the questions that the field is investigating overlook the need for students to learn how to read and respond to different collaborative settings. Existing research focuses on chronicling the various factors that predict the effectiveness of a collaborative experience, or on changing user behaviour in the moment. These are worthwhile research endeavours for developing our theoretical understanding of collaboration. However, there is also a need to centre student perceptions and experiences with collaboration as an important area of inquiry. Based on a survey of 131 university students, we find that student collaboration-related concerns can be represented across seven different categories or dimensions: Climate, Compatibility, Communication, Conflict, Context, Contribution, and Constructive. These categories extend prior research on collaboration and can help the field ensure that future collaboration analytics tools are designed to support the ways that students think about and utilize collaboration. Finally, we describe our instantiation of many of these dimensions in our collaborative analytics tool, BLINC, and suggest that these seven dimensions can be instructive for re-orienting the Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) and collaboration analytics communities.