A Multimodal Interaction Framework for Blended Learning

Humans interact with each other by utilizing the five basic senses as input modalities, whereas sounds, gestures, facial expressions etc. are utilized as output modalities. Multimodal interaction is also used between humans and their surrounding environment, although enhanced with further senses such as equilibrioception and the sense of balance. Computer interfaces that are considered as a different environment that human can interact with, lack of input and output amalgamation in order to provide a close to natural interaction. Multimodal human-computer interaction has sought to provide alternative means of communication with an application, which will be more natural than the traditional “windows, icons, menus, pointer” (WIMP) style. Despite the great amount of devices in existence, most applications make use of a very limited set of modalities, most notably speech and touch. This paper describes a multimodal framework enabling deployment of a vast variety of modalities, tailored appropriately for use in blended learning environment and introduces a unified and effective framework for multimodal interaction called COALS.