About
Multimodal and immersive learning experiences represent one of the most promising frontiers in educational technology today. From extended reality and serious games to sensor-enriched environments and AI-driven feedback, the potential to transform how people learn is enormous, yet the field remains fragmented, with researchers and practitioners often working in isolation.
At the same time, interest in and expectations towards immersive, multimodal approaches in education are rapidly growing across institutions, industries, and policy levels.
A wide range of approaches already exists, spanning areas such as learning analytics, multimodal data fusion, embodied learning, intelligent tutoring systems, serious games, and extended reality (XR) environments. These approaches, however, typically emerge from isolated research communities and lack strong cross-disciplinary connections.
Meanwhile, advances in adjacent fields, including generative AI, spatial computing, biosignal processing, and affective computing, are opening new design spaces that have yet to be fully explored for educational purposes. Emerging directions around ethical AI, explainable systems, and human-centred design further shape the path toward responsible immersive learning.
MILES aims to bridge these interdependent communities by bringing together researchers from education, technology, cognitive science, and design to explore synergies, exchange knowledge and experiences, align activities, and work towards shared strategies for multimodal immersive learning.
SIG Chairs
Daniele Di Mitri
German UDS, Germany
Daniele Di Mitri is a professor of Multimodal Learning Technologies at the German University of Digital Science. At the German UDS he leads the research group “Augmented Feedback” and coordinates the master’s in Advanced Digital Realities. He is an associated researcher at the DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and a […]
Bibeg Limbu
Leiden Delft Erasmus Center for education and learning
Jan Schneider
DIPF, Germany
Roland Klemke
Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands / TH Köln, Germany
Prof. Dr. Roland Klemke is chair of the department of Technology-enhanced Learning and Innovation of the Faculty of Educational Science of the Open University of the Netherlands. He leads national and international research projects in the TEL field. Research topics include artificial intelligence for education, multimodal learning experiences, augmented- and mixed-reality, multi-sensor architectures, serious gaming, game-based […]
Khaleel Asyraaf Mat Sanusi
Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln, Germany
Khaleel is a researcher, developer, and teaching assistant at Cologne Game Lab. He is also an external Ph.D. candidate at the Open University of the Netherlands (OU). For his research, he explores the potential of utilising sensors and immersive technologies in the context of learning by collecting, analysing, and exploiting data from multiple modalities. While […]
Deniz Iren
OU Nederland
Detailed objectives
- Provide an exchange space for researchers, PhD students, and other interested parties working at the intersection of multimodal technologies and education
- Collect and share resources on immersive learning design, multimodal data, and related pedagogical approaches
- Work towards a strategy for integrating immersive and multimodal experiences in education, covering technology, pedagogy, ethics, and accessibility
- Exchange experiences in developing, selecting, and applying multimodal and immersive approaches across educational contexts
- Establish MILES as the go-to entry point for immersive learning initiatives and related technology communities in Europe
Planned activities
- Organisation of workshops and lecture sessions at summer schools
- Organisation of workshops and tracks for EC-TEL
- Design sprints and hands-on prototyping events (Immersion Labs / Game Jams)
- Aiming at joint research proposals
- Aiming at joint publications in the field, e.g. a book or edited volume on Multimodal Immersive Learning
