Trends Discovery
in Distance Education
with Visualization
Muhammed Salman Khan, Martin Ebner, Hermann Maurer

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LaBomba Aida - Second Life

Technology enhanced Learning
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„In any academic discipline the research
publication represent the knowledge structure of
that discipline. This represents the research
trends, landmark papers, key researchers,
network of collaborations and contributions from
different institutions and regions.“

Research:
„We like to demonstrate and compare the change
of interest in publications, contributions and
research across different regions and institutions
over a period of time for ED-Media conference.“

Data Extraction:
- parsing the HTML pages from 2003 - 2008
- country information compared with
GeoByte database
- for name‘s of insitutions string match
algorithm called n-grams were used
- 99 unique keywords were compared

Data Extraction:
- 4607 papers were examined
- 8186 authors
- 2911 institutions
in detail: 2003=779; 2004=921; 2005=810;
2006=501; 2007=697; 2008=899 papers

Visualisation tool:
- Web application will be made available
for researchers, lecturers and students
- using Adobe Flex (for flash animation),
Java Servlets, MySql

Main Interface:

World View (in general):
2003 + 2004 2003 + ... +
2006
2003 + ... +
2008

World View (contributions):
2003 + 2004
2007 + 2008
2005 + 2006

World View:
top keywords
2003 + 2004 2003 + ... + 2003 + ... +
2006 2008

World View (top keywords):
Students
Educational
Technology
Teachers
Learning
Objects
Instructional
Design
Interaction
Computers Schools Virtual
Environment
and Learning
Management
System

World View (top contributors): 2003 + ... +
2008
2003 + ... +
2008

Continents view :
Europe: 831 papers
Europe: 493
papers
Asia: 265 papers
Asia: 565 papers
Oceania: 169 papers
Oceania: 276 papers
Europe: 1365 papers
Asia: 936 papers
Oceania: 406 papers

Continents view :
North
America
Europe
Asia
Oceania
South
America
Africa

Countries view :
Japan: 104 papers
Japan: 200
papers
Australia: 136 Canada: 227 papers
papers
Australia: 220 papers
Canada: 87
papers Taiwan: 188 papers
Japan: 344 papers
Canada: 366 papers
Australia: 333 papers
Taiwan: 287 papers

Countries view :
United
States
Japan
Canada
United
Kingdom
Australia
Austria Taiwan
Germany

Institutions view of USA:
University of Texas at
Austin: 10 papers
University of Hawaii at Manoa: 18
University of Georgia: 19 papers
papers
University of Hawaii University of Texas at
at Manoa: 15 papers Austin: 16 papers
University of Texas at
Austin: 6 papers
University of Hawaii at
Manoa: 21 papers
University of Georgia:
27 papers

Discussion
- Data Extraction and analyses show the
global trends as well as top contributing
nations
- Problem of institutions ambiguity
- Next steps are „appearing keywords“

SOCIAL LEARNING
Computer and Information Services
Graz University of Technology
Graz University of Technology
Martin Ebner
http://elearning.tugraz.at
http://elearningblog.tugraz.at