The Metalogue project aims to develop a multi-modal, multi-party, dialogue system with metacognitive abilities that will advance our understanding of natural conversational human-machine interaction, and interfaces that incorporate multimodality into virtual and augmented reality environments. In this paper we describe the envisaged technical system, the learning contexts it is being developed to support and the pedagogical framework in which it is proposed user interactions will take place. This includes details of the system-generated learner feedback provided both in-performance and post-performance. We then move on to explain what has been achieved so far in terms of the integrated system pilots, and finally we discuss three key challenges the Metalogue researchers are currently working to overcome.