So, now that we have a definition for "educational data mining", let's wait for the definition of "Learning analytics" , currently prepared by Hendrik Drachsler, and then let's check where are the differences between these two mega-concepts if any...

  "Adaptive learning environment" is the new entry of the TEL Dictionary. It has been prepared by Marcus Specht from OUNL.   To define "adaptivity" is not too much of a challenge, but exploring carefully this concept in the case of TEL research raises issues which may turn into research challenges. It is the way I understand Marcus Specht when he refers to "the convergence or possible conflicts between disciplines involved in research on adaptivity".     The learner is a user to who a learning environment must adapt and resist… It must resist when an evolution is necessary for the learning process, but adapt when it facilitates it. This suggests that the concept of adaptivity has to be shaped more accuratly to be useful for the design of TEL environments. Differentiations must be introduced in the models and frameworks, and reflected by the discourse on adaptive learning environments, depending on the fact that the driver of adaptation is the learning process, the learner (as a person), the content or the teacher.      By the way, is there a difference between "adaptivity" and "personalisation" of learning environments?  

On the occasion of the first presentation of TeLearn, the TEL Open Archive, in Helskinki for the EC elearning conference in 2006, participants expressed the interest for more than a repository. It is from there that the idea of the TEL Dictionary and TEL Thesaurus was born. The shaping of the project took several years, but thanks to the support of Stellar and TELEARC, it is now close to be a reality. The last step is the creation of website at the following URL: http://www.tel-thesaurus.net (it is also available with the .org extension). From the tel-thesaurus.net home page, the visitor can have access to the TEL Thesaurus and the TEL Dictionary. As you know tools are fully interdisciplinary, multilingual and takes into account the multicultural and epistemological roots of research on learning.   The TEL-thesaurus is more than the list of the entries of the TEL Dictionary. It is based on a lexical analysis of the content the TeLearn Open Archive. More than 1500 documents were analysed, it produced 372 terms describing their content, what added to the 99 keywords proposed by the authors results in the 471 terms which form this first version of the TEL thesaurus. Each term of the thesaurus will be linked to the terms to which it is related conceptually, a translation will be provided in any language for which it is relevant, and its definition taken from the TEL Dictionary is provided. Currently this only partially achieved, but thanks to several collaborations, the project is progressing in a very promising way.        

About 20 PhDs and senior researchers from different disciplines participed in the TEL Dictionary session of the Medical Education Content Sharing Technologies Spring School held  Thessaloniki on April 5th. After a short presentation of the TEL dictionary initiative, participants were invited to scan the current lists of terms and expressions included in the TEL Thesaurus, in order to make remarks and suggestions and express their own priority. Here are the results and some comments.  Participants express their wish to see in the list terms and expressions from disciplines which provide TEL research with important concepts. Here they are: Connectionism, Connectivism, Case based learning, Community of practice, Active learning, Interactive learning, Worked examples, Digital literacy. They are from the learning science. Only one term from computer science was suggested: Intelligent agents. What may be emphasized is that there are no terms specific to TEL research, but terms pointing to concepts and theories from education and psychology that researchers need. So here is the needed extension for the next release of the thesaurus.  Four expressions from the thesaurus were pointed as deserving priority: Distributed learning, Game-based learning, Ubiquitous learning, Collaborative learning. This corresponds well to one of the prominent stream of communication of the MEI 2012 conference: internet as the place were to content is shared and learning communities are emerging. Then, three questions: Why is "constructionism" in the thesaurus and not "constructivism"? Both terms are used as keywords to tag paper in the TeLearn open archive, hence both could have been in the first version of the thesaurus. However, "constructivism" is one of the big concepts in psychology,  for which it is rather easy to find well documented definitions. Since the strategy is to develop the thesaurus in an incremental way, this term has not been included at the first stage. "Constructionism" is a term which has been coined by S. Papert as a response within the Logo framework to the limitation found in referring only to "Constructivism" (one of the foundational reference of Logo). This is then a term specifically introduced in TEL research, and hence we took it (see the definition prepared by Richard Noss). Why is "Virtual campus" in the thesaurus? It seems to be a direct translation of a French expression (campus virtuel) and not a genuine English keyword.  It is right that "campus virtuel" is a keyword in the French TEL research area. However, "virtual campus" is an entry of wikipedia where it is defined as "the online offerings of a college or university where college work is completed either partially or wholly online, often with the assistance of the teacher, professor, or teaching assistant." A quick look at Scholar shows that this expression is rather popular internationally and for quite a long while. As suggested by the participant, there is also the expression "Digital campus", which looks rather close and possibly more English. But may be we have to cautious with such feelings and come back to the literature to check the claims against evidence. One should notice that "teaching" is not in the thesaurus, why? To some extend we can consider as a curious fact that the word "teaching" is not present. There is the word "tutor", what suggest that teaching is not completely foreign to the TEL research area, as it were. But it is right that the word is not in the set of keywords from which we started -- those of TeLearn repository and also a questionnaire to the community. One reason may be that the focus on learning and the learned tended to push aside teaching if not the teacher. And this is reflected in the keywords chosen by researchers, even if they use the word in their writings. Another reason  may be that in English there is some "teaching" in the meaning of learning (as it is the case in French where you can say "les élèves apprennent l'anglais", but also "j'apprends l'anglais à mes élèves"...

Thanks to the effort of Marianne Lykke and Marie Mette from Aalborg, we have now got a Danish version of the TEL thesaurus. Again it is an occasion to think about the terms we use, their meaning and their capacity to travel across boarders. This time, it appears that not less than 21 of the (limited) list of the TEL keywords in the Danish literature miss a Danish source where the term is used directly. This includes words like "Collaboration script", "Learner modelling" or "Computer-based learning environment" (see the complete list below). Several other issues are reported, as differences in meaning (e.g. learning space vs Læringsrum), or the absence of academic resources (e.g. computer-based laboratory). A LinkedIn subgroup entitled "TEL Dictionary, det dansk hjørne" has been created, you are invited to join it to discuss the translation issues that will be presented in details there.

Learning design has a definition which depends on the number of block letters one uses! With to block letters it is a formal specification of the same without them, and the latter means the activity of designing a learning environment. It is not exactly a joke even if it seems so... Actually,  the situation is better if one use "learning design" for the practice, and IMS LD for the formal specification; what is generally the case. By the way, this is a good example of the need we have for different words for different worlds in particular if we have to merge them in some situations. But there is an other strange or funny story (it depends on your taste) : when one searches "learning design" in Wikipedia, one is directed to "instructional design". If I would accept that there is a tight relation between both expressions, I certainly not consider them as synonymous. Don't you? Quote from Wikipedia (English version, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_design), retrieved on 2012-02-23 20:50 Grenoble: [ Instructional design / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia / (Redirected from Learning design)]

One of the outcomes of the recent Stellar London Big meeting is the Language Grand Challenge Problem. This post and two others to follow are opportunities to discuss it. Please feel free to comment and suggest. Everything will be considered for the final version... (3) Time frame, evaluation and funding   The time-frame to verify the success of such an initiative is of an order of 2 to 3 years to establish the instruments, at least 5 years to verify the adoption and the sustainability. The measurement of the progress and success is twofold: on the one hand, the multilingual thesaurus and dictionary must be largely populated by the best specialists and covering largely the scientific and technical discourse of the TEL research area, on the other have indicators of adoption must be found; it could be witnessed by an analysis of the evolution of the discourse in the conference papers (several hundreds each year) which must become more rigorous (what does not mean static), and of the evolution of the feeling one has of the communication with stakeholders. This activity is peripheral to the normal academic activity. It has a cost that the current project can afford and which then can be afforded by a consortium of scientific societies and stakeholders groups interested in the outcome. The sustainability can be ensured by an little effort and financial support of the scientific community -- no more that the effort and cost required to referee conferences and journal. It will just part of the normal activity, especially because the evolution of a thesaurus and a dictionary is actually rather slow.   Comments? Suggestions?

One of the outcomes of the recent Stellar London Big meeting is the Language Grand Challenge Problem. This post and two others to follow are opportunities to discuss it. Please feel free to comment and suggest. Everything will be considered for the final version... (2) activities and initiatives The Stellar network of excellence has already engaged in exploring solutions to address this Language GCP by (1) establishing a multilingual TEL research thesaurus, (2) creating a TEL Dictionary and associating discussion groups to these. The challenge is to scale these and the related activities so as to reach all the community. A structure must be found to ensure the adoption of the outcomes of this activity, this can be obtained by well . The challenge is to find a balance between openness and quality insurance. Language is a live organism, which cannot be ruled by standards and must be able to evolve, while there is a need for a reference with some stability. The community has to be creative to solve the problem raised by this tension. A specific methodology must be designed and implemented to identify communication issues with stakeholders and way to solve them.   Comments? Suggestions?

One of the outcomes of the recent Stellar London Big meeting is the Language Grand Challenge Problem. This post and two others to follow are opportunities to discuss it. Please feel free to comment and suggest. Everything will be considered for the final version... (1) Introduction, justification Language issues are of a special importance in Europe, notable in the case of R&D in education (and indeed, educational technology). It is now well known that words do not circulate that easily from one language to an other, essentially because the concepts they carry do not match easily from one culture to an other. In short: Traduttore, traditore. So what is true for literature is true as well for science and even technology. In an international community like the one of the TEL research area, this can turn into a seriously difficulty and can prevent fluent and fruitful exchanges, and hence progress because of the associated misunderstandings. For example, the most common Chinese translation of "learning object" is "学习对象" which actually means "learning target", or how could a French researcher translate "seamless learning environment" without turning it into a sentence... What prevents a smooth navigation across languages, prevents also the communication among disciplines. For example, "educational affordance" cannot be considered as a synonymous of "affordance". Eventually, this problem arises also in the communication between researchers and stakeholders. For example, if researchers consider "learners", mots stakeholder consider "students", "pupils", "trainees"... Then in a domain which is little formalised (in terms of the existence of a comprehensive symbolic system or ruled representation), and which is emerging as a scientific research area, the issue of language is really a Grand Challenge Problem for Europe, but world wide as well.   Taking the language issues as such either within research or at the interface between research and stakeholders, can allow to find solution with a high level impact. Pointing a problem is a first step in finding a solution which economical and intellectual impact will be outstanding. Economically, it will help stakeholders to overcome the obstacle of the linguistic segmentation of the market. At the same level it will facilitate the R&D and innovation transfer. Intellectually, it will enhance a common understanding of education problems, their possible solution while allowing to meet the necessity of the different cultures. It is when we are aware of the differences that we are able to deal with them without necessarily suppressing them. The challenge is to build on the diversity of the languages which is a richness, as well as moving scientific communication beyond this barrier.   Comments? Suggestions?

In the TEL research history, the expression "Intelligent tutoring system" is one of the older and the more stable. Not to say that the meaning does not evolve; surely it does from an instructional paradigm to an interactive intelligent learning paradigm. But, after about 40 years of development this line of research has developed a set of concepts, methods and models which are very impressive. I would claim that the problems on which it has allowed us to know more and better are all those related to the learner because of all the effort to specify proper epistemic or cognitive models of learning. Eventually, two words, in my opinion, are now better understood thanks to TEL research: knowledge and error.

Simulation-based learning is rather old concept, born at the beginning of the XX° century, which as taken the best benefit from the use of digital technology. Wim notices that with the development of multimedia and the internet it has got a "renewed interest", but some may claim that it is nothing by "serious games". Two which extent is it legitimate to merge both concepts? You can access the new definition [here]