JCAL special issue on multimodal learning analytics [editorial]

Editoria

Quantifying Collaboration Quality in Face-to-Face Classroom Settings Using MMLA

Producción CientíficaThe estimation of collaboration quality using manual observation and coding is a tedious and difficult task. Researchers have proposed the automation of this process by estimation into few categories (e.g., high vs. low collaboration). However, such categorical estimation lacks in depth and actionability, which can be critical for practitioners. We present a case study that evaluates the feasibility of quantifying collaboration quality and its multiple sub-dimensions (e.g., collaboration flow) in an authentic classroom setting. We collected multimodal data (audio and logs) from two groups collaborating face-to-face and in a collaborative writing task. The paper describes our exploration of different machine learning models and compares their performance with that of human coders, in the task of estimating collaboration quality along a continuum. Our results show that it is feasible to quantitatively estimate collaboration quality and its sub-dimensions, even from simple features of audio and log data, using machine learning. These findings open possibilities for in-depth automated quantification of collaboration quality, and the use of more advanced features and algorithms to get their performance closer to that of human coders.European Union via the European Regional Development Fund and in the context of CEITER and Next-Lab (Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, grant agreements no. 669074 and 731685)Junta de Castilla y León (Project VA257P18)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Project TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R

Learning Sciences Beyond Cognition: Exploring Student Interactions in Collaborative Problem Solving

Composed of insightful essays from top figures in their respective fields, the book also shows how a thorough understanding of this critical discipline all but ensures better decision making when it comes to education

Inferring Student Engagement in Collaborative Problem Solving from Visual Cues

Automatic analysis of students' collaborative interactions in physical settings is an emerging problem with a wide range of applications in education. However, this problem has been proven to be challenging due to the complex, interdependent and dynamic nature of student interactions in real-world contexts. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for the classification of student engagement in open-ended, face-to-face collaborative problem-solving (CPS) tasks purely from video data. Our framework i) estimates body pose from the recordings of student interactions; ii) combines face recognition with a Bayesian model to identify and track students with a high accuracy; and iii) classifies student engagement leveraging a Team Long Short-Term Memory (Team LSTM) neural network model. This novel approach allows the LSTMs to capture dependencies among individual students in their collaborative interactions. Our results show that the Team LSTM significantly improves the performance as compared to the baseline method that takes individual student trajectories into account independently

The Multimodal Tutor: Adaptive Feedback from Multimodal Experiences

This doctoral thesis describes the journey of ideation, prototyping and empirical testing of the Multimodal Tutor, a system designed for providing digital feedback that supports psychomotor skills acquisition using learning and multimodal data capturing. The feedback is given in real-time with machine-driven assessment of the learner's task execution. The predictions are tailored by supervised machine learning models trained with human annotated samples. The main contributions of this thesis are: a literature survey on multimodal data for learning, a conceptual model (the Multimodal Learning Analytics Model), a technological framework (the Multimodal Pipeline), a data annotation tool (the Visual Inspection Tool) and a case study in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation training (CPR Tutor). The CPR Tutor generates real-time, adaptive feedback using kinematic and myographic data and neural networks

Modelling collaborative problem-solving competence with transparent learning analytics: is video data enough?

In this study, we describe the results of our research to model collaborative problem-solving (CPS) competence based on analytics generated from video data. We have collected ~500 mins video data from 15 groups of 3 students working to solve design problems collaboratively. Initially, with the help of OpenPose, we automatically generated frequency metrics such as the number of the face-in-the-screen; and distance metrics such as the distance between bodies. Based on these metrics, we built decision trees to predict students' listening, watching, making, and speaking behaviours as well as predicting the students' CPS competence. Our results provide useful decision rules mined from analytics of video data which can be used to inform teacher dashboards. Although, the accuracy and recall values of the models built are inferior to previous machine learning work that utilizes multimodal data, the transparent nature of the decision trees provides opportunities for explainable analytics for teachers and learners. This can lead to more agency of teachers and learners, therefore can lead to easier adoption. We conclude the paper with a discussion on the value and limitations of our approach

Our actions, ourselves: How unconscious actions become a productivity indicator

Productivity always was, and still is, the main goal of organizations, that being economic, governmental, military or educational. Having the means to control, detect and monitor features that have impact on productivity is a major issue, and subject to various investigation. Considering that most of the times, if not always, unconscious actions play a very important role in the way we work, study, socialize, and even in the way we have fun, the high significance of those factors becomes very clear. Monitoring unconscious actions, selecting those of them that do play a role regarding productivity, and trying to proactively take measures to improve processes, is then the goal of this work. Specifically, we are concerned about using computers peripherals to non-intrusively monitor user’s actions. The term non-intrusively assumes greater importance, as we are concerned with unconscious actions, thus we need to strongly ensure that no entropy is derived by the way this process is done. Peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, touch screens, and possibly webcams and microphones can act as sensors, completely hidden from the user. As we use them daily, they somehow assume part of our life, and can be used to collect data that will be processed to get useful information regarding that particular user. We then can build a behavioral profile, for instance, that will provide a better insight of user’s actions. We can predict some possibly negative features, such as stress, fatigue, level of attention, for instance. If detected or predicted, they can greatly help to better manage all the information we need, in the right way. We can suggest that someone takes a coffee break, because she/he is stressed. We can tell him/her to work/study in the morning, because the information we have collected suggests that is the period of the day that is more suitable to get better results, for that person. We can suggest postponing the following meeting, because the actual mood indicates that that person- (undefined

EFAR-MMLA: An evaluation framework to assess and report generalizability of machine learning models in MMLA

Producción CientíficaMultimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) researchers are progressively employing machine learning (ML) techniques to develop predictive models to improve learning and teaching practices. These predictive models are often evaluated for their generalizability using methods from the ML domain, which do not take into account MMLA’s educational nature. Furthermore, there is a lack of systematization in model evaluation in MMLA, which is also reflected in the heterogeneous reporting of the evaluation results. To overcome these issues, this paper proposes an evaluation framework to assess and report the generalizability of ML models in MMLA (EFAR-MMLA). To illustrate the usefulness of EFAR-MMLA, we present a case study with two datasets, each with audio and log data collected from a classroom during a collaborative learning session. In this case study, regression models are developed for collaboration quality and its sub-dimensions, and their generalizability is evaluated and reported. The framework helped us to systematically detect and report that the models achieved better performance when evaluated using hold-out or cross-validation but quickly degraded when evaluated across different student groups and learning contexts. The framework helps to open up a “wicked problem” in MMLA research that remains fuzzy (i.e., the generalizability of ML models), which is critical to both accumulating knowledge in the research community and demonstrating the practical relevance of these techniques.Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional - Agencia Nacional de Investigación (grants TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R and TIN2014-53199-C3-2-R)Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional - Junta de Castilla y León (grant VA257P18)Comisión Europea (grant 588438-EPP-1- 2017-1-EL-EPPKA2-KA