Towards Assessing Communicative Competence Using Multimodal Learning Analytics

Multimodal Learning Analytics (MLA) technology has received increasing attention in the learning science field. Recently, novel types of assessments using MLA to analyze the process of student activities have been advocated. In this paper, we suggest an extension of MLA to educational assessments measuring communicative competence. MLA is useful for the measurement of all aspects of the human communication process, e.g., verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Also, MLA’s capability to track rich observations over a long time provides a means to conduct detailed analyses of the human communication process. To support this view, we conducted a brief but informative survey of related research from several areas. Then, we proposed a conceptual framework related to developing new assessments using MLA. One examplary case study was presented to illustrate this framework.