Overcoming the Difficulties for Teachers in Collaborative Learning Using Multimodal Learning Analytics

During collaborative learning (CL) teachers have little to no information about what is happening in the groups, however, they are expected to plan, monitor, support, consolidate and reflect upon student interactions. How is a teacher able to provide support the students when she/he is not fully aware of the situation and progress of the students? Multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) could offer teachers valuable insights into the CL process, however, not many MMLA outputs are used in real practice today, and designing such MMLA dashboards remains a challenge. The aim of the present design-science research is to find out if multimodal learning analytics is able to help teachers help support students in CL. After having gone through two cycles of design based research, it is apparent that the involved teachers are interested in getting an overview of the activities within the groups and help with assessment. The involved teachers were ready to use collaboration analytics if it can assure a certain level of accuracy, more research is needed on how to use MMLA to support teachers in CL assessment.