Multimodal Learning Analytics Archives

Apr232025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: On-Your Marks, Ready? Exploring the User Experience of a VR Application for Runners

Multimodal Learning Analytics, Publication

Do you wish to be a better runner and ready to get going? Becoming a better runner is more than just choosing the right pair of running shoes and increasing your physical ability to perform a successful run. You also need to be mentally prepared to increase your running productivity. Here is where Virtual Reality (VR) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help. Up until now, there have been limited options available for mental training using technologies like sensors and actuators. These technologies have primarily been used to improve physical training. A newly published study explores the possibilities that VR and CBT have to create a technology-based mental training for athletes. Our team carried out a formative study to explore the user experience by incorporating CBT techniques into VR technology,…

Apr152025 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New Pub: Enhancing User Onboarding in Virtual Reality Educational Applications

Multimodal Learning Analytics, Publication

Learning in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment can be a captivating and immersive experience for students. Despite the potential that VR has to help students learn in new and exciting ways, many students may also struggle during their initial interactions with a given VR environment. Whether or not effective user onboarding takes place can be the make or break of an application’s success. A new publication sheds light on this key challenge of effective onboarding by exploring how pre-training methods impact the onboarding experience in VR educational applications. 36 people, primarily university students, participated in a study to understand how different approaches affected their ability to navigate VR environments and their overall satisfaction. The findings show that pre-training helps users get an orientation and slightly boosts satisfaction, but it falls…

Dec22024 by Prof. Dr. Hendrik DrachslerNo Comments

PhD Defense: A Bridge between Learning Analytics and Learning Design

Book, Event, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, Multimodal Learning Analytics, PhD defense, Publication, School

We warmly congratulate our esteemed associate partner, DR. Marcel Schmitz, on successfully defending his PhD thesis on November 29, 2024. Marcel is a senior lecturer and researcher in Data Intelligence and the Applied Data Science & Artificial Intelligence program at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. In his dissertation, titled “Towards Learning Analytics-Supported Learning Design”, he focused on how education can be better personalized by incorporating learning analytics already in the design and course planning. His dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hendrik Drachsler (DIPF | Leibniz Institute & Goethe University Frankfurt), with co-supervisors Prof. Dr. Maren Scheffel (Ruhr University Bochum) and Dr. Roger Bemelmans (Zuyd University of Applied Sciences). Marcel's dissertation provides actionable strategies not only for higher education but also for other educational sectors. His work envisions a future…

Jun32024 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

JTEL workshop: Making Presentable Research

Higher Education, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Workshop

[caption id="attachment_6515" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo of Nina and Stefan presenting in the worskhop[/caption] On May 14th, a workshop titled "Making Presentable Research" was held at the JTEL Summer School 2024, led by Stefan Hummel, Nina Mouhammad, Daniele Di Mitri, and Jan Schneider. The session was designed to equip PhD candidates with the skills necessary to effectively communicate their research. The ability to present research clearly and persuasively is a vital skill for PhD candidates. This workshop provided a platform to learn and practice these skills, using innovative software tools designed for message composition and nonverbal communication training. The workshop was organized into several segments, each focusing on different aspects of research presentation: An introduction to the topic and project. A guide to downloading and accessing the necessary software. A session…

May242024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

FoLA supports Simulation-based Training for High-risk Clinical Situations

Assessment, Empirical Study, Feedback, Further Education, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Learning Design, medical education, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Workshop

From May 16th to 17th, 2024, Hendrik Drachsler and Marcel Schmitz (TETRA AI, ZUYD University of Applied Science) had the pleasure of providing a FoLA workshop at the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland (CAI) in Dublin, Ireland, under the support of the Insight research centre. Together with members from CAI and from the ASSERT Centre, College of Medicine and Health, University College Cork (UCC), they used the FoLA tool to plan a simulation-based training for high-risk clinical situations using highly informative feedback. Data from these trainings will be collected and analyzed to determine how effective this training is in improving the performance of the attendees. The study is being planned to take place with around 100 doctors in training at two simulation training centers: at ASSERT Centre UCC and at…

Mar272024 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

CORE Roundtable in Munich

Assessment, Critical Online Reasoning, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Project, Project meeting

Hendrik Drachsler, Sebastian Gombert and Gianluca Romano participated at the Roundtable in Munich for the CORE project (Critical Online Reasoning in Higher Education) from 04.03.-05.03.2024. In those two days, our team had the chance to recapitulate on how the infrastructure stood strong during the first survey from December 2023 to February 2024, and pave the way for next steps and surveys. In summary, the infrastructure performed well. It dealt with approximately 10Mio. requests per seconds and the majority of hurdles participants reported were out of our authority. Requests from participants were dealt with quickly in a few days on average. Even though we are proud of our achievements there is still a lot to be done for future surveys. For the agenda we split into smaller groups, each of us…

Sep272023 by Nina MouhammadNo Comments

HyTea Consortium Meeting in Cologne

Artificial Intelligence, Competence development, Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Project, Project meeting

How can software support presentation skills training? How can AI be used responsibly in this context? What to take from traditional presentation skills training and what to do completely different? In the HyTea consortium meeting, we discussed these questions but also many others and took important decisions on what to focus on in the HyTea project. We started preparing the needed knowledge needed for these critical decisions a few months ago when conducting interviews with presentation training experts. We asked them how they train presentation skills, how students should prepare a presentation and how they think AI or technology in general could support in presentation skills training. Furthermore, we also discussed concerns the experts had regarding AI usage in this context. In preparation of the consortium meeting, we synthesized all…

Sep72023 by Daniele Di MitriNo Comments

New pub: Using Accessible Motion Capture in Educational Games for Sign Language Learning

Conference, Multimodal Learning Analytics

A new publication will be presented at the EC-TEL conference 2023 in Aveiro, Portugal. "Using Accessible Motion Capture in Educational Games for Sign Language Learning" https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-42682-7_74 Abstract Various studies show that multimodal interaction technologies, especially motion capture in educational environments, can significantly improve and support educational purposes such as language learning. In this paper, we introduce a prototype that implements finger tracking and teaches the user different letters of the German fingerspelling alphabet. Since most options for tracking a user’s movements rely on hardware that is not commonly available, a particular focus is laid on the opportunities of new technologies based on computer vision. These achieve accurate tracking with consumer webcams. In this study, the motion capture is based on Google MediaPipe. An evaluation based on user feedback shows that…

Jun162023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

New pub: Measuring Collaboration Quality Through Audio Data and Learning Analytics

Book chapter, Computer-supported collaborative learning, Learning Analytics, Multimodal Learning Analytics

In the rapidly evolving twenty-first century, collaboration stands as a vital skill. Recognizing its significance, the detection of collaboration quality can play a pivotal role in fostering effective teamwork. This newly published chapter dives into the realm of collaboration quality detection and measurement, aiming to achieve the following objectives: Defining collaboration quality by leveraging audio data and unobtrusive learning analytics measures. Detailing the design of a sensor-based setup specifically tailored for automatic collaboration analytics. Advancing the quantification of collaboration quality through the utilization of this setup and presenting the analysis using insightful visualizations. Moreover, the chapter delves into the challenges and issues at hand while exploring potential solutions that build upon existing research. To elucidate the various objectives, the terminology of "indicators" (i.e., the events) and "indexes" (i.e., the process)…

May312023 by Heather WehnerNo Comments

A Vibrant Week of Exchange Between Brazilian and German LA Researchers

Higher Education, Learning Analytics, Multimodal Learning Analytics, Research Methods, Research topic, Workshop

From May 22 to 25, 2023 five esteemed guest researchers from Brazil visited the EduTec team in Frankfurt in the context of the Humboldt Foundation's Connect Program. This productive exchange not only shed light on the current state of Learning Analytics (LA) research in Brazil and Germany but also paved the way for potential collaborative research activities. Status of LA research in Brazil The week began with a discussion of the role of LA in the global South. Rafael Ferreira Mello from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (UFRPE) emphasized the importance of adapting LA methodologies to the specific context and needs of Brazil, ensuring inclusivity and accessibility in educational initiatives. Diego Dermeval from the Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL) highlighted the potential of AI and LA in supporting teachers…