The Special Interest Group on Multimodal Learning Analytics Across Spaces (Cross-MMLA SIG) aims to promote research that considers the challenges of making sense of complex educational data that involve multiple interaction modalities, people and learning spaces. To understand and optimize learning traces from the real world requires new degrees of sophistication across technology, learning, and design; and to build upon the ongoing and previous work from the Learning Analytics and related communities.

Learning is a complex activity, and currently, there has been much research on learning analytics that has focused on interaction through LMS and other similar systems. However, learning happens in the wild (in both physical and digital spaces) and is complex. With the advent of new technologies and the increasing interest of understanding the role of physical spaces, it is now possible to approach complex human interactions from a learning analytics perspective. However, to understand and optimize learning traces from the real world requires new degrees of sophistication across technology, learning, and design; and to build upon the ongoing and previous work from the Learning Analytics and related communities. Therefore, the rationale for the SIG is to kick start a community within SoLAR to take this challenge.

The goals of the SIG are to support the Society of Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) with specific activities that bring together interdisciplinary researchers that are exploring the role and impact of analytics on teaching, learning, training and development. Furthermore, the SIG will organize special activities for the Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference (LAK) and the Learning Analytics Summer Institute (LASI) that supports collaborative and open research. These special activities include hands-on workshops scientific and practice-focused, PhD courses, and outreach to education and governments. In addition, the SIG will conduct activities that help build the larger SOLAR community.