TELLNET Visualization - The Shape of Europe emerges from the Collaboration of European Schools

Cooperation among European Schools (Data from a eTwinning data set)

This visualization from my colleague Pham Manh Cuong is from the upcoming TELLNET deliverable about dynamic visualizations of data from the eTwinning network. The image visualizes European schools as small, colored circles and the collaboration between schools as lines between the circles. The colors are coding different subjects while the size of labels indicates the intensiveness (number) of collaborations. It is really impressive how the shape of Europe emerges from this visualization of the school collaboration network.

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Teacher networks - Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession

Riina has uploaded the final publication of our TELLNET project to slideshare. We will have the final event of the project in Brussels soon. Our role in the network was to develop a social network analysis methodology for the eTwinning network. We came out with a learning analytics method for big data in real-world data sets. We learned a lot about clearing data sets for analysis. We learned a lot about keeping them anonymous and respecting the privacy of teachers and schools. We learned a lot about data management, efficient computation of time series and visualization challenges. Altogether, it was a great learning experience for us, too. We published nine papers to share our experiences. Some older entries are listed below:

• Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres
• Social Learning Analytics to study Teachers' Large-scale Professional Networks (eTwinning)
• Learning Analytics - Social Network Analysis for Learning Communities
• Learning Analytics in a Teachers' Social Network - The Paper

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Final Tellnet event at Media & Learning 2012 Conference in Brussels

Teachers' Lifelong Learning Network

www.tellnet.eun.org

Final Tellnet event at Media & Learning 2012 Conference in Brussels

Social media networks in schools and in teacher's lives

How teachers can use social networks to support their professional development? The final TeLLNet workshop will take place on 14 November at the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels, focusing on the importance of professional development networks for teachers' lives.

Participants in this workshop will be able to familiarise with the basics of Social Network Analysis in the context of eTwinning, the community for school in Europe, and will learn about concepts such as network structure and social capital. A prospective scenario-building exercise called "Teachers' profession and teacher collaboration networks in 2025" will offer a number of recommendations to policy makers and educational stakeholders.

A booklet with final results from the project will also be released. The booklet will additionally include a set of possible future scenarios of teachers' profession in compulsory education in 2025. The booklet is targeted to educational policy-makers in Europe. It's aim is to help discuss plausible futures of teachers' profession and collaboration networks through the use of fictional scenarios.

About TeLLNet

 The TeLLNet project is to study the eTwinning network (currently over 170 000 teachers) through visualisation techniques, Social Network Analysis (SNA) and prospective scenario building exercises. Using these techniques, the goals is to identify the main structures, actors, networks and Communities of Practice that are effective in sharing practices, encouraging innovation and creativity at schools. The project is co-funded by the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project partners are:

European Schoolnet, Knowledge Team, WP1, 5, 6, 7

RWTH Aachen University, Informatic 5 (Information Systems & Databases), WP2

OUNL, Celstec, Learning Networks for professionals, WP3

IPTS-JRC, Institute of Prospective Technology Studies, WP4

 

www.tellnet.eun.org

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IWCL 2012 Contributions from the ACIS Group at RWTH Aachen University

The 11th International Conference on Web-based Learning ICWL 2012, Sinaia, Romania is over. Our Advanced Community Information Systems (ACIS) group at RWTH Aachen University has made some contributions to the program.

In the learning analytics track we had a paper on "Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres" . It combines research from the TELMAP as well from the TELLNET project.

Manh Pham, Michael Derntl, Yiwei Cao, Ralf Klamma: Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres, in E. Popescu et al. (Eds.): ICWL 2012, LNCS 7558, pp. 255–264, 2012. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012

Abstract. In blogospheres the learning process is characterized by evolving roles of bloggers and dynamic change of content. Existing approaches for learning blogospheres do not provide a comprehensive solution to dealing with these dynamics. In this paper, we propose a learning analytics approach for learning blogospheres unifying two complementary perspectives: (1) structural analysis of the blogosphere to identify learners' social capital; and (2) content analysis to capture dynamics in blog content over time. To support both types of analysis, social network analysis methods are applied as a fundamental approach to analyzing and visualizing knowledge sharing on learning blogospheres. We exemplify the learning analytics approach using two real-world learning blogospheres: the Mediabase - a large blog collection for technology enhanced learning, and the European eTwinning Network - a lifelong learning blogsphere. Results show that both analytics perspectives in combination advocate an advanced learning analytics approach to understanding and assessing learning processes in learning blogospheres.

Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres from Yiwei Cao

In the personal learning environments track we had a paper on "A Mashup Recommender for Creating Personal Learning Environments". It presents research from the ROLE project. This paper won the ICWL 2012 best paper award!

Alexander Nussbaumer, Marcel Berthold, Daniel Dahrendorf, Hans-Christian Schmitz, Milos Kravcik, Dietrich Albert: A Mashup Recommender for Creating Personal Learning Environments, in E. Popescu et al. (Eds.): ICWL 2012, LNCS 7558, pp. 79–88, 2012. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 (Best Paper Award)

Abstract. This paper presents an approach and an integrated tool that supports the creation of personal learning environments suitable for self-regulated learning. The rationale behind this approach is an ontology of cognitive and meta-cognitive learning activities that are related to widgets from a Widget Store. Patterns of such learning activities allow for providing the user with appropriate recommendations of widgets for each learning activity. The system architecture follows a Web-based approach and includes the Mashup Recommender widget and its backend service, the ontology available through a Web service, the Widget Store with its interface to retrieve widgets, and the integration into the learning environment framework. The pedagogical approach regarding the usage of this technology is based on self-regulated learning taking into account different levels between guidance and freedom. A quantitative and qualitative evaluation with teachers describes advantages and ideas for improvement.

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Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres

My colleague Yiwei Cao from my ACIS group at RWTH Aachen University gave a presentation on "Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres" at the ICWL 2012 in Sinaia, Romania last week. It combines research from the TELMAP as well from the TELLNET project.


Abstract. In blogospheres the learning process is characterized by evolving roles of bloggers and dynamic change of content. Existing approaches for learning blogospheres do not provide a comprehensive solution to dealing with these dynamics. In this paper, we propose a learning analytics approach for learning blogospheres unifying two complementary perspectives: (1) structural analysis of the blogosphere to identify learners' social capital; and (2) content analysis to capture dynamics in blog content over time. To support both types of analysis, social network analysis methods are applied as a fundamental approach to analyzing and visualizing knowledge sharing on learning blogospheres. We exemplify the learning analytics approach using two real-world learning blogospheres: the Mediabase - a large blog collection for technology enhanced learning, and the European eTwinning Network - a lifelong learning blogsphere. Results show that both analytics perspectives in combination advocate an advanced learning analytics approach to understanding and assessing learning processes in learning blogospheres.

Learning Analytics for Learning Blogospheres from Yiwei Cao

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Social Learning Analytics to study Teachers' Large-scale Professional Networks (eTwinning)

Riina gave a presentation on the TELLNET project at the OST conference in Tallinn, Estonia. She has already uploaded the slides to slideshare.

Social Learning Analytics to study Teachers' Large-scale Professional Networks (eTwinning) from European Schoolnet

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Learning Analytics in a Mobile World - A Community Information Systems Perspective

This is the presentation I gave in the eMadrid Seminar Series. Thanks to Carlos Delgado Kloos and all the people at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid in Leganes. Because the presentation have been viewed so often now, I decided the make a quick walk through at least the first couple of slides which present our theoretical approach to learning analytics. If you have comments or questions please feel free to raise your voice.

Learning Analytics has become a hot topic in the technology enhanced learning community and a lot of research groups are contributing to the field in the moment. Our perspective on learning analytics is on learning communities. Essentially, we - the Advanced Community Information Systems group at RWTH Aachen (slide 5) - think that self-regulated learning processes are embedded in community-regulated learning processes (slide 6). We think, that learning media have a great influence on learning processes since knowledge is not media-independent. From this perspective, we try to develop social learning theories like communities of practice by Etienne Wenger (slide 7) into media-specific knowledge creation theories. To cross the gap between the observation of network of media artifacts and the evidence of social learning processes taking place we deploy a set of methods, among others social network analysis (slide 8). To guide our research we build concrete learning environments but also gather media artifacts in a repository enabling cross-community and cross-media analysis. This repository is called the MediaBase (slide 11). In our most recent research we connect our learning environments and the MediaBase by a new new community monitoring approach called MobSOS (slide 10). MobSOS is able to combine quantitative data and qualitative data for comprehensive insights into community activities. This is reached by conceptualizing the community learning process as a socio-technical learning process (slide  9). We are validating our approach in a lot of ongoing EU funded research projects in the area of technlogy enhanced learning.

Learning Analytics in a Mobile World - A Community Information Systems Perspective

View more presentations from Ralf Klamma

Abstract:

With the increasing availability of smart phones and tablets as well as growing mobile bandwidth, mobile learning offers by the means of apps and electronic books become a commodity. In this presentation I motivate by examples that professional communities need learning support beyond the commodity level. Learning analytics in such settings is more than simple assessment strategies but needs a deep understanding of interactions between learners and systems, learner and learning resources as well as learners among each others. Such a perspective is delivered by community information systems serving the needs of mobile communities. The meaningful combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment strategies supports the understanding of learner goals, learning processes and community reflection. Case studies from ongoing EU research projects like ROLE, GALA and TELMAP will support the argumentation.

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