A Mediabase for Technology Enhanced Learning in Europe

There is growing interest in analytic techniques and tools for supporting scientific communities, e.g. through visual analytics tools. In the domain of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), one of the first endeavors in this regard started in 2006, when the PROLEARN project, a European TEL network of excellence, deployed a “Mediabase” for TEL in Europe. The objective was to overcome fragmentation and propel excellence in the field by providing stakeholder groups like scientists and policy makers with digital information obtained from TEL social media sources (e.g. mailing lists, blogs, RSS/Atom feeds). From the end-user perspective a key task was the development and provision of easy-to-use tools for extracting and presenting relevant information contained in the Mediabase, e.g. for cross-media social network analysis and self-observation. In the scope of the currently running TEL-Map project, a support action funded by the European Commission, the Mediabase idea was adopted to empower TEL stakeholders in Europe and beyond to find relevant information and to obtain a rich overview of different types of actors and artifacts involved in the TEL domain. The main objective is to provide support for roadmapping activities in TEL, which required extending the available data sources and analytics tools.