LAK12 Panel: EDM meets LA

Here in Vancouver, everyone’s gathered for the kickoff tomorrow for LAK 2012!

I’ll be chairing a panel to explore what makes the Learning Analytics & Knowledge conference and community distinctive and complementary to the longer established Educational Data Mining community.

The final set of position statements from our panellists are archived in the ACM LAK12 proceedings, but here they are below as well…

Baker, R., Duval, E., Stamper, J., Wiley, D. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2012). Educational Data Mining meets Learning Analytics. Plenary Panel: 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, 29 April – 2 May 2012, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Abstract: This panel continues the dialogue between the Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics communities. EDM has been developing as a community for longer than the LAK conference, so what if anything makes the LAK community different, and where is the common ground? Is LAK just reinventing the wheel, or adding some important new spokes? To push the metaphor, are LAK’s wheels fit for the new learning terrain without EDM? In any case, what do we need in addition to wheels to go places? Is EDM “narrower but deeper”, best suited for stable, well understood domains in which domain knowledge and user cognition can be formally modelled, but at considerable expense? Is EDM also more mathematical, while LA is more qualitative, socially oriented, and interested in open, social learning “in the wild” where far less can be known about users or learning objectives? Or are these just myths and stereotypes waiting to be debunked? Two representatives from each community (LAK: Duval & Wiley; EDM: Baker & Stamper) will present a brief position, outlined in this paper, in which they set out what it is that excites them about their ‘home’ discipline and community, and how they see the relationships between the fields. The issue will then be opened up for conference delegates to debate what could or should be future trajectories for the fields.

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