Learning Analytics – Dimstudio

New pub: Structured Over Chat-Based Feedback

Posted on 10/13/2026by Daniele Di Mitri

The paper, Structured over Chat-Based Feedback: Comparing User Preferences on Different Presentation Feedback Reports, by Noemi Giulia Bontempo, Nina Mouhammad and Daniele Di Mitri, explores how learners prefer to review feedback after practising a presentation, focusing on a question that receives less attention than immediate coaching: how should feedback be presented once the rehearsal is over?

Digital presentation-training systems can provide feedback on delivery behaviours such as posture, gestures and orientation towards the camera or audience. But during a presentation, learners are already managing their content and delivery. A report after the rehearsal offers another opportunity: to revisit performance and reflect on what to improve. We compared three ways to support that process in Presentable: a timeline that links feedback to moments in the presentation, a chat-based conversation with a virtual coach, and a storytelling-style report organised into themes such as gestures, posture and camera connection.

We evaluated the three designs in an online study with 84 participants. Everyone reviewed all three versions, which used the same fictional rehearsal scenario and feedback content. This allowed us to compare the presentation of feedback rather than differences in the feedback itself. Participants rated each design and compared its perceived clarity, usefulness, support for reflection and potential to help them understand their performance.

The two structured designs were rated more positively overall than the chat-based report. The timeline was selected as most helpful overall by 48% of participants, while 40% chose the storytelling design and 12% chose the chat design. The timeline was particularly valued for showing when behaviours occurred. The storytelling design was selected most often as easiest for understanding presentation performance, by 49% of participants.

Participants also highlighted the design elements they found useful for reflection: clear visual grouping of categories (73%), highlighting key moments (61%), and making the connection between feedback and time clear (55%). Some appreciated the chat’s personal and interactive feel, but others found it harder to get an overview, compare feedback points or return to specific items.

For us, the findings suggest that conversational presentation alone does not necessarily make feedback easier to use. When learners review a rehearsal, clear organisation and context matter: they need to see what happened, when it happened and how different observations fit together. The results also point towards a promising next step: combining the timeline’s moment-by-moment detail with the storytelling design’s readable thematic overview.

We interpret these results as design insights, not evidence that one report format improves presentation skills. Participants assessed mock-ups based on a fictional scenario; they did not use the reports after delivering their own presentations. Our next step is to integrate the Rehearsal Report into Presentable and connect feedback items to the corresponding moments in a learner’s recording, enabling evaluation in real practice sessions.

Citation:

Bontempo, N. G., Mouhammad, N., & Di Mitri, D. (2026). Structured over Chat-Based Feedback: Comparing User Preferences on Different Presentation Feedback Reports. European Conference on E-Learning, 25(1), 99–108. https://doi.org/10.34190/ecel.25.1.5389

Research visits

Research visit at the University of Bari

Posted on 03/18/2024by Daniele Di Mitri

In January and February 2024, I pursued a research visit at the University "Aldo Moro" of Bari, Italy, in the Department of Informatics (DIB); at this university, I conducted undergraduate studies in computer science, graduating in 2014 with a thesis in Learning Analytics for Formative assessment. In that department, my interest in education technologies began.

Going into that tall glass building after 10 years as a senior researcher was a strange feeling...

The visit involved the Department of Informatics of Bari (DIB) and Education, Psychology, and Communication Science (ForPsiCom). My primary reference contact during my stay was Dr Gabriella Casalino, an assistant professor at the DIB. For this reason, I was stationed in the CILAB group, led by Prof Dr Giovanna Castellano, to which Dr Casalino belongs.

The overall scope of the research visit in Italy was to establish multiple bridges between my research institute (the DIPF) and the University “Aldo Moro” of Bari.

The first bridge established with the CILAB, the Computational Intelligence Laboratory, was to hold a presentation about my research. On Monday, 22nd January 2024, I delivered my presentation as part of the seminar on “Information Technology Outlook,” the seminar series part of the PhD programme in Computer Science and Mathematics. My talk was entitled “Intelligent Tutors, Learning Analytics and Multimodal Technologies for Feedback Augmentation.”

The talk emphasised the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in providing personalised and immediate feedback to students in online learning environments, especially when no human experts are available. AI's constant feedback availability facilitates self-paced learning, including cognitive and physical tasks, through immersive technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality. The presentation briefly overviewed the speaker's research on AI and Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA), focusing on "Multimodal Tutors". It showed how MMLA improves online teaching by providing personalised feedback, using relevant applications that integrate AI and immersive technologies.

The talk sparked some interest in my research from the research group members. In fact, after that, I planned various smaller or individual talks with doctoral students to support them in improving their research design. I also participated in two research events of the CILAB group. The first was the GNCS meeting, gathering researchers from CNR, the University of Bari, and the University of Padua to discuss the results of the joint project on “Computational methods, based on fuzzy logic, for eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)”. Furthermore, I participated in the brainstorming meeting of the CILAB to address the latest and most complicated research challenges the group members face.

The collaboration with ForPsiCom focused on research transfer and exchange with the existing groups in Bari that deal with education technologies, the first led by Prof Beatrice Ligorio, the second led by Prof Loredana Perla and Prof Michele Baldassare.

On the 20th of February 2024, I presented to Prof Ligorio's group. The talk, entitled “Intelligent Tutors, Learning Analytics and Multimodal Technologies for Feedback Augmentation”, had, this time, a much more humanistic focus compared to the one given at the DIB. The presentation lasted 90 minutes, followed by discussions and questions. After the presentation in the afternoon, I attended 4 PhD presentations from the PhD students of Ligorio’s group. I provided PhD candidates with my feedback on their progress and what they could improve in their future steps. Moreover, we discussed a possible involvement in a research project on emotions and learning.

On the 28th of February 2024, I presented at Prof Perla’s and Baldassarre’s group. As preparation for the presentation, I asked the students to listen to a recent podcast I recorded entitled “The Future is Multimodal” as part of the AI_ducation podcast series. The meeting with Perla’s group was particularly successful as it allowed the participants (mostly PhD students) to share their views on AI in education, specifically the support that generative AI and large language models can have in education.

Call for Proposals

CfP CROSSMMLA @ LAK 2023 Workshop

Posted on 11/08/2022by Daniele Di Mitri

Call for Papers: CROSSMMLA @ LAK 2023 Workshop: Leveraging Multimodal Data for Generating Meaningful Feedback

To be held face-to-face on March 13, 2023, in Arlington, Texas, United States, in conjunction with the LAK 2023 conference.

The CROSSMMLA workshop series has focused on collecting and analysing multimodal data across the physical and virtual spaces for understanding and optimising learning processes.

Awards Events Hackathon Multimodal Pipeline Presentations

LAK'19 Arizona

Posted on 03/21/2019by Daniele Di Mitri

March is the month of the Learning Analytics & Knowledge conference, in 2019 has taken place in Tempe, Phoenix, Arizona. Coming back from a very long journey (extended by some days off) in the United States, I decided to wrap up all my conference highlights in a blog post.

Events

Amsterdam LSAC Conference & Hackathon

Posted on 10/26/2018by Daniele Di Mitri

This week I attended the 2nd Learning and Student Analytics Conference http://lsac2018.org taking place at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. The conference started to group the researchers and practitioners in Learning Analytics in The Netherlands. In practice this year it turned out attracting people from all over Europe. For this reason, in 2019 LSAC becomes a European Learning Analytics conference, which will be hosted in Nancy, France at the Loria lab.