The European TEL Projects Community from aSocial Network Analysis Perspective

Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

RWTH Aachen UniversityAdvanced Community Information Systems (ACIS)Informatik 5, Ahornstr. 55, 52056 Aachen, Germany

{derntl,klamma}@dbis.rwth-aachen.de

Abstract. In this paper we draw a community landscape of EuropeanCommission-funded TEL projects and organizations in the 6th and 7thFramework Programmes and eContentplus. The project metadata werecrawled from the web and maintained as part of the TEL Mediabase,a large collection of data obtained from different web sources includingblogs, bibliographies, and project fact sheets. We apply social networkanalysis and impact analysis on the project consortium progression graphand on the organizational collaboration graph to identify the most cen-tral TEL projects and organizations. The key findings are that networksof excellence and integrated projects have the strongest impact on theproject network; that eContentplus was a funding bridge between FP6and FP7; and that the tightly knit collaboration network may inhibit theassimilation of new organizations and ideas into the TEL community.

1 Introduction

For many years, technology enhanced learning (TEL) has been a well-fundedthematic area in the work programmes of the European Community’s (EC)Framework Programmes (FP). Current projects like the STELLAR network ofexcellence [http://stellarnet.eu] and the TEL-Map support action [http://telmap.org] take a supporting role for the EC and other TEL stakeholdersto provide input to future challenges and roadmapping for the European TELcommunity. This is evidence that the TEL community has a genuine interest inits thematic and collaborative structures and dynamics. To facilitate this kind ofself-reflection based on available data, we established the Mediabase [1] in 2006as a collection of TEL related social media artifacts that have been crawledfrom the web, fed in to relational databases, and analyzed using web-based toolsavailable to the TEL community for self-observation and self-modeling [2].

Following that spirit, this paper focuses on the macro level of funding andorganizational collaboration in European TEL by analyzing the current statusand historic evolution of the landscape of TEL projects and organizations usingsocial network analysis (SNA) techniques. Specifically, we research these aspects:

– Project progression: identify sustained organizational collaboration ties be-tween consecutive projects to identify cliques of successful collaborators and

2 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

a measure of project impact; identify the most central projects, and consortiathat unite central organizations.

– Inter-organizational collaboration: identify central participating organiza-tions in terms of SNA metrics (e.g. betweenness centrality, PageRank, andclustering in the organizational collaboration network) and EC funding.

– Times series analysis: analyze the development of SNA metrics in the projectprogression network and in the organizational collaboration networks sincethe start of FP6.

The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we discuss related work.In Section 3 we outline the TEL projects community data set and formal founda-tions of projects as social networks. In Section 4 we analyze project progression,i.e. the sustained collaboration of project partners in follow-up projects. In Sec-tion 5 we analyse the organizational collaboration network in TEL projects. InSection 6 we highlight the dynamics in these social networks since the start ofFP6. Sections 7 and 8 sum up the key findings and conclude the paper.

2 Related Work

An analysis of consortium involvements of TEL partners in other projects, part-ners, and events was previously conducted and reported [3] by the STELLARnetwork of excellence. This analysis was centered on STELLAR as the centralentity. A more general approach was adopted in [4], where the authors define aformal model for social network analysis of all projects funded by the EC in FP1through FP4. They model projects and organizations as graphs and apply SNAalgorithms to identify the overall characteristics of these R&D networks. Theyidentify these networks as being typical of complex, scale-free networks withsmall diameter and high clustering. Similar findings are reported in [5] followinga social network analysis of the first five FPs.

In a recent paper [6], the authors model the affiliation network of FP6 projectsusing an agent-event metaphor. In their model, organizations are agents, whoparticipate in projects, which represent the events. This model was employed toobtain general insight into FP6 collaborations using SNA techniques, studyingthe effects of different network representations—one-mode network (actors andevents separated) vs. two-mode network (actors and events unified)—on theanalyses and results. A similar study that focused on the forming and evolvingof these networks is reported in [7], finding the emergence of dense hierarchicalnetworks resting on an “oligarchic core” of participants.

Previous work also includes the application of community detection in R&Dproject collaborations, e.g. in [8] the authors apply community detection onthe FP6 organizational collaboration graph, with a main interest in the role ofnationality and type of organizations. An analysis of FP5 collaboration withemphasis on the role of geographical or technological proximity of partners isreported in [9]. The authors found that both factors impact the collaborationnetwork, with technological proximity having the greater effect.

The European TEL Projects Community 3

In [10] an analysis of the collaboration networks in FP4 with particular em-phasis on the differences of telecommunications and agro-industrial industriesis performed. The paper focuses on specific thematic areas and their compara-tive characteristics in terms of consortium size, required funding, and the role ofscientific vs. industry partners.

In this paper, we build on the ideas and formal foundations laid out inthese previous research endeavors. Our locus of interest, however, is differentand unique: we are interested in a particular thematic area, i.e. technology en-hanced learning, and draw insights and findings of relevance to participants andstakeholders in that particular community. In a related presentation [11] weformulated first ideas about project impact based on social network analysis,however without proposing a formal measure of impact. To close this gap, thepresent paper reports analyses of the R&D networks in TEL from a temporal-dynamic perspective, going beyond previous work by proposing and applying ameasure of impact of project consortia on the TEL collaboration landscape.

3 The European TEL Projects Community

Data Set. The TEL projects database includes details on TEL projects fundedunder FP6, FP7, and eContentplus programmes. In total, the metadata of 77TEL projects (see Table 1) were collected and used for the analyses presentedin this paper. The data includes detailed information on the projects like startand end dates, cost, EC funding, and consortium members (in total there are604 distinct organizations participating in these 77 projects). The database wasfed by a crawler that was deployed to collect and scrape project facts from theCORDIS website [12] for FP6 and FP7 projects, as well as from the respectiveeContentplus pages. As evident in Table 1, only projects funded under TELrelated calls were included in the data set.1

In the CORDIS data we found that there were several typos and variants inthe spelling of organizations and countries; the list of organizations was thereforemanually post-processed to merge variants and correct spelling errors. Organi-zational name changes were not accounted for. For instance, Giunti Labs S.r.l.was rebranded to eXact Learning Solutions in 2010. In the data set, these—andall organizations with similar rebrandings—are represented as separate entities.Likewise, organizational mergers are not accounted for, e.g. ATOS Origin andSiemens Learning, which merged in 2011, and Aalto University in Finland, whichwas established in 2010 as a merger of three universities. Also, the CORDIS factsheets expose some omissions; one that was discovered is the fact sheet of theEdReNe eContentplus project, which only includes the coordinator without anyof the consortium members. Finally, a plethora of projects from other TEL re-lated funding channels is not yet included.

1 A browseable version of the complete TEL projects data set is avaialble on theLearning Frontiers portal at http://learningfrontiers.eu/?q=project_space

4 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

Table 1. TEL projects data set.

Call Projects #

eContentplus Call 2005 CITER, JEM, MACE, MELT 4

eContentplus Call 2006 COSMOS, EdReNe, EUROGENE, eVip, Intergeo, KeyToNature, Or-ganic.Edunet

7

eContentplus Call 2007 ASPECT, iCOPER, EduTubePlus 3

eContentplus Call 2008 LiLa, Math-Bridge, mEducator, OpenScienceResources, OpenScout 5

FP6 IST-2002-2.3.1.12 CONNECT, E-LEGI, ICLASS, KALEIDOSCOPE, LEACTIVE-MATH, PROLEARN, TELCERT, UNFOLD

8

FP6 IST-2004-2.4.10 APOSDLE, ARGUNAUT, ATGENTIVE, COOPER, ECIRCUS,ELEKTRA, I-MAESTRO, KP-LAB, L2C, LEAD, PALETTE, PRO-LIX, RE.MATH, TENCOMPETENCE

14

FP6 IST-2004-2.4.13 ARISE, CALIBRATE, ELU, EMAPPS.COM, ICAMP, LOGOS,LT4EL, MGBL, UNITE, VEMUS

10

FP7 ICT-2007.4.1 80DAYS, GRAPPLE, IDSPACE, LTFLL, MATURE, SCY 6

FP7 ICT-2007.4.4 COSPATIAL, DYNALEARN, INTELLEO, ROLE, STELLAR, TAR-GET, XDELIA

7

FP7 ICT-2009.4.2 ALICE, ARISTOTELE, ECUTE, GALA, IMREAL, ITEC, META-FORA, MIROR, MIRROR, NEXT-TELL, SIREN, TEL-MAP, TER-ENCE

13

Projects as Social Networks. A collaborative project can be modeled as asocial network [13,6]. A social network is modeled as a graph G = (V,E) with Vbeing the set of vertices (or nodes) and E being the set of edges connecting thevertices with one another [14]. We define P as the set of projects, and O as theset of organizations involved in these projects. Similar to [6], we define a functionµ representing the membership of any organization o ∈ O in the consortium ofany TEL project p ∈ P as follows to enable graph-based analyses of the TELproject and organization networks:

µ : P ×O →{true if o is or was member of the consortium of pfalse otherwise .

4 Project Consortium Progression

The project consortium progression graph GP = (VP , EP ) contains projects asnodes (VP = P ) and their successor relationships as directed edges. A successorrelationship between two projects is established if (1) at least k organizationshave participated in both projects, and (2) the successor project started at leastt time units after the predecessor project. Let s : P → R map projects to theirstart points in time, represented for simplicity as real numbers, then we candefine the set of edges as

EP = {(u, v) : u, v ∈ VP ∧ s(v)− s(u) ≥ t ∧ |{o ∈ O : µ(u, o) ∧ µ(v, o)}| ≥ k}.

The least restrictive parameter pair k = 1, t = 0 produces a graph includingall 77 TEL projects and a total of 712 edges (note that t = 0 implies thatthe graph also includes edges between projects that started at the same time).Looking for a reasonable value for k to represent consortium progression in thesense of continued collaboration we require at least two consortium members

The European TEL Projects Community 5

KALEIDOSCOPE

STELLAR

ASPECT

ITEC

GALA

RE.MATH

PROLEARNROLE

iCOPER

OpenScout

TARGET

SCY

GRAPPLE

PROLIX

COSMOSOpenScienceResources

MELT CONNECT

ICAMP

PALETTE

MACE

TEL-MAP

ECIRCUS

ECUTE

EMAPPS.COM

KP-LAB

LEAD

mEducator

LT4EL

LTFLL

TENCOMPETENCE

ICLASS

ELEKTRACALIBRATE

COOPER

Organic.Edunet

UNITE

NEXT-TELL

EduTubePlus

MIRROR

Math-Bridge

UNFOLD

VEMUS

IMREAL

LiLa

ALICEMATURE

XDELIA

80DAYS

TERENCE

IDSPACE

APOSDLE

ARGUNAUT

INTELLEO

EUROGENE

ARISTOTELEMIROR

METAFORACOSPATIAL

MGBL

KeyToNature

Intergeo

DYNALEARN

TELCERT

ELU

L2C

E-LEGI

LEACTIVEMATH

Fig. 1. Project progression graph spanning FP6, FP7, and eContentplus TEL projects.

present in a successor project, i.e. k = 2. The time span parameter t ∈ R≥0

should allow for a time gap between two consecutive project starts to reasonablyestablish a predecessor-successor relationship. Of course the time span betweencall deadline and project start may vary, but the actual point in time whenpartners team up for a project proposal is not represented in our data. So welet months be the unit of time and chose t = 3 months as the lower thresholdfor the time between the start of two projects. With this threshold the youngerproject can reasonably considered as a successor of the older project.

The resulting graph for k = 2, t = 3 is illustrated in Fig. 1, including 68 nodesand 198 edges. The size of each node and its label in the figure is proportional toits weighted degree centrality, i.e. the number of adjacent projects weighted byconsortium overlap. The graph layout was produced by applying the ForceAt-las layout in Gephi. Evidently, KALEIDOSCOPE—one of the two “inaugural”TEL Networks of Excellence in FP6—is the most degree-central node, boostedby its large consortium of 83 partners, which is more than five times the aver-age consortium size of 14.5 in FP6. The graph also reveals that in addition tostrong ties between FP6 and FP7 projects, several eContentplus projects (e.g.OpenScout, ICOPER, ASPECT) have central positions and strong connections

6 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

with projects in FP6 and FP7. This can probably be explained by the fact thateContentplus bridged a “funding gap” in 2007 when FP6 funding was stallingfollowing the last FP6 projects launched in 2006, while FP7 TEL funding waskicked off only in 2008. In fact, in 2007 only eContentplus projects were launchedwith EC funding in our data set (compare also the time series analysis of theproject networks in Section 6, in particular Fig. 9). This kind of gap bridging byeContentplus, where a large share of organizations funded under FP6 and FP7engaged in e-content focused R&D projects, could be interpreted as evidence foran organizational “research follows money” attitude.

Project Impact. One interesting aspect of GP is the impact of project con-sortium members on sustaining and shaping the social TEL project ties afterthe project start (in fact, this shaping already commences during the proposalwriting phase). Measuring this impact by applying graph centrality metrics (e.g.degree, betweenness, closeness, etc.) to GP entails several problems. For one,these metrics will favor projects with very large consortia. In our data set thepresence of the KALEIDOSCOPE project with its huge consortium is a primeexample of a node that represents an “outlier” in terms of consortium size anddegree centrality. Moreover, in GP the projects’ chances of having predecessorand successor projects vary depending on the distribution of project start dates.In terms of the social network, these factors bias a project’s chance of havingstronger incoming and outgoing edges. To control for these biases we conceivedan impact measure of projects p ∈ VP as follows.

Let St,kp be the successor projects of p, i.e. the set of projects that startedat least t time units after the start of p and that include at least k consortiummembers of p. Let Dt

p be the set of all potential successor projects, i.e. all succes-sor projects that started at least t time units after the start of p, and let Cp ⊆ Obe the set of consortium members of project p. It holds that St,kp ⊆ Dt

p ⊆ P . Wedefine the impact δ of project p as

δp =|St,kp ||Dt

p|∑q∈St,k

p

|Cp ∩ Cq||Cp|

.

In this formula, the term|St,k

p ||Dt

p|accounts for the actual number of successor

projects of p relative to opportunity, that is, the fraction of actual vs. potentialsuccessor projects. Essentially, this eliminates the potential (dis)advantages from

a projects’ position on the timeline. The term|Cp∩Cq||Cp| represents the weighted

overlap of a project with other project consortia and thus accounts for the vary-ing sizes of project consortia and the varying number of organizations that over-

lap between two projects. Actually the latter term is a shorthand of|Cq∩Cp||Cq| ·

|Cq||Cp| ,

in which the first term represents the share of q’s consortium that was “fed” withmembers of project p, and the second term represents the ratio of the sizes of

the two consortia. Consequently, summing up these ratios with∑

q∈St,kp

|Cq∩Cp||Cq|

essentially represents the cumulative share of successive project consortia in GPfilled up exclusively with p’s consortium members.

The European TEL Projects Community 7

Table 2. Top 15 projects by impact on the TEL projects landscape.

# Project p Runtime Funding Programme Type |Cp| |S3,2p | |D

3p| IFM δp

1 PROLEARN 2004–07 6.01 FP6 NoE 22 22 69 .19 1.142 KALEIDOSCOPE 2004–07 9.35 FP6 NoE 83 34 69 .07 .663 GRAPPLE 2008–11 3.85 FP7 STREP 15 8 28 .10 .384 iCOPER 2008–11 4.80 ECP BPN 23 7 25 .07 .335 STELLAR 2009–12 4.99 FP7 NoE 16 5 18 .05 .236 ASPECT 2008–11 3.70 ECP BPN 22 6 25 .06 .217 COOPER 2005–07 1.95 FP6 STREP 8 6 49 .10 .208 MACE 2006–09 3.15 ECP CEP 13 7 41 .06 .209 LTFLL 2008–11 2.85 FP7 STREP 11 5 28 .06 .18

10 PROLIX 2005–09 7.65 FP6 IP 19 7 49 .02 .1711 TELCERT 2004–06 1.80 FP6 STREP 9 7 69 .09 .1612 ROLE 2009–13 6.60 FP7 IP 16 3 18 .01 .0913 TENCOMPETENCE 2005–09 8.80 FP6 IP 15 5 49 .01 .0914 CONNECT 2004–07 4.69 FP6 STREP 18 6 69 .02 .0815 ICLASS 2004–08 12.59 FP6 IP 17 6 69 .01 .08

Funding . . . European Commission contribution in million euro

IFM . . . Impact for Money = δ/Funding

Type . . . Network of Excellence (NoE), Integrated Project (IP), Content Enrichment Project(CEP), Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP), Best Practice Network (BPN)

The top 15 projects by impact for t = 3, k = 2 ordered by descending δ aredisplayed in Table 2. The table includes projects from all three programmes withFP6 represented strongest, and it prominently features Networks of Excellenceand Integrated Projects, although these are by number among the rarest projecttypes in the Framework Programmes. The best impact-for-money (IFM) ratiowas achieved by PROLEARN, followed by COOPER and GRAPPLE. More dataand further research is required to identify indicators for high-impact projects.The project proposals and deliverables would certainly help in this regard, sincethese typically contain information on and cross-references to work in otherprojects.

5 Organizational Collaboration

In addition to the project consortium progression network presented in the pre-vious section, TEL projects can be viewed from another angle: the organizationalcollaboration graph GO = (VO, EO) contains organizations and their collabora-tions in the project consortia [13]. This graph shows organizations as nodes andan (undirected) edge between two nodes if there are at least k projects whereboth organizations have participated in, i.e. VO = O and

EO = {(u, v) : u, v ∈ VO ∧ u 6= v ∧ |{p ∈ P : µ(p, u) ∧ µ(p, v)}| ≥ k}.GO is an undirected graph, which is visualized in Fig. 2. For k = 1 it includes

603 distinct partners and 9315 edges, of which only those representing at leasttwo shared projects are displayed in Fig. 2. Apart from the core component, thereare no strongly connected sub-networks, which means that in every project thereis at least one partner who is involved in another project.

We calculated SNA metrics and funding for each participant in VO; the re-sulting table of the top ten organizations is given in Table 3. The table is ordered

8 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

Open Universiteit Nederland

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universitaet Hannover

The Open University

Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenImc Information Multimedia Communication Ag

Jyvaskylan Yliopisto

Deutsches Forschungszentrum Fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbhTechnische Universiteit Eindhoven

Atos Origin Sociedad Anonima Espanola

Universitaet Graz

The Provost Fellows And Scholars Of The College Of The Holy And Undivided Trinity Of Queen Elizabeth Near Dublin

Wirtschaftsuniversitaet Wien

Politecnico Di Milano

Eun Partnership Aisbl

Tiigrihuppe Sihtasutus

Giunti Labs S.R.L.

Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne

Univerza V Ljubljani

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten Forschung E.V

National Centre For Scientific Research Demokritos

Universiteit Utrecht

Universitaet Duisburg-Essen

Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche

The University Of Nottingham

Heriot-Watt University

Inesc Id - Instituto De Engenharia De Sistemas E Computadores, Investigacao E Desenvolvimento Em Lisboa

Svietimo Informaciniu Technologiju Centras

Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen

Zentrum Fuer Soziale Innovation

Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan

Institute Of Education, University Of London

National And Kapodistrian University Of Athens

University Of Bristol

Universite Joseph Fourier Grenoble 1

University Of Leicester

Vaexjoe Universitet

Tiedekeskussaeaetioe

Ellinogermaniki Agogi Scholi Panagea Savva Ae

Institut Jozef Stefan

University Of CyprusEotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem

Universitetet I OsloKlett Lernen Und Wissen Gmbh

Synergetics N.V.

The University Of Bolton

Bundesministerium Fuer Wissenschaft Und Forschung

The University Of Warwick

Universita Della Svizzera Italiana

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Universite Catholique De Louvain

Technische Universiteit Delft

The Chancellor, Masters And Scholars Of The University Of Cambridge

Universitatea Politehnica Din Bucuresti

Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen

Institute For Parallel Processing Of The Bulgarian Academy Of Sciences

Universite Pierre Mendes France

Universitetet I Bergen

Universiteit Twente

Technische Universitaet GrazExact Learning Solutions Spa

Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet Ntnu

Aalto-Korkeakoulusaatio

Biba - Bremer Institut Fuer Produktion Und Logistik Gmbh

Centro Di Ricerca In Matematica Pura Ed Applicata - Consorzio

Moma Spa

Coventry University

Fundacio Per A La Universitat Oberta De Catalunya

Boc Asset Management Gmbh

Sap Ag

Centre Internacional De Metodes Numerics En Enginyeria

Forschungszentrum Informatik An Der Universitaet Karlsruhe

Goeteborgs UniversitetThe University Of Exeter

Imaginary Srl

Kompetenzzentrum Fuer Wissensbasierte Anwendungen Und Systeme Forschungs - Und Entwicklungs Gmbh

Medien In Der Bildung

Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft Mbh

The University Of Birmingham

Aalborg Universitet

Ort France

Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule Zuerich

Universita Degli Studi Di Genova

Serious Games Interactive

Ministerio Da Educacao

Icodeon Limited

Universidad De VigoKnowledge Markets Consulting Gmbh

Uni-C, Danmarks Edb-Center For Forskning Og Uddannelse

Centre National De Documentation Pedagogique

The Manchester Metropolitan University

Elfa S.R.O.

Siveco Romania Sa

Hogskolen I Oslo

Brunel University

Universitaet Augsburg

University Of Sunderland

Testaluna Srl

Tallinna Ulikool

Scienter Scrl

Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg

Universitaet Fuer Bodenkultur Wien

Universidad Politecnica De Madrid

Universitaet Koblenz-Landau

Landesinitiative Neue Kommunikationswege Mecklenburg-Vorpommern E.V.

Silogic S.A.The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem

Lego System A/S

Eugenides Foundation

Intrasoft International Sa

Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Kuenstlerischer Informatik E.V.

Universite De Liege

Centre For Research And Technology Hellas

Rigas Tehniska Universitate

Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Szamitastechnikai Es Automatizalasi Kutato Intezet

Ben-Gurion University Of The Negev

Kauno Technologijos Universitetas

Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza Im. Stanislawa Staszica W Krakowie

Universite Paris 7 Denis Diderot

Research Academic Computer Technology Institute

Universita Degli Studi Di Siena

Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique

Groupe Des Ecoles Des Telecommunications

Teknillinen Korkeakoulu

Universita Degli Studi Di Salerno

Universitatea Tehnica Cluj-Napoca

Umea UniversitetUniversidad Nacional De Educacion A Distancia

Universidad De Valladolid

Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis

Sofiiski Universitet "Sveti Kliment Ohridski"

Atit Bvba

Lancaster University

Universitaet Des Saarlandes

Universiteit Van Amsterdam

Universita Ta Malta

Evolaris Next Level Privatstiftung

Universita Degli Studi Di Trieste

Universitaet Wien

Institut Europeen D'Administration Des AffairesFundacio Barcelona Media Universitat Pompeu Fabra

European Institute For E-Learning

Reseau Menon E.E.I.G.

Universitaet Bayreuth

Universite Montpellier Ii

Universidad Carlos Iii De Madrid

Educentrum Vzw

Education Highway Innovationszentrum Fuer Schule Und Neue Technologie Gmbh

Humance Ag

Fwu Institut Fuer Film Und Bild In Wissenschaft Und Unterricht Gemeinnuetzige Gesellschaft Mit Beschraenkter Haftung

Educatio Tarsadalmi Szolgaltato Kozhasznu Tarsasag

Istituto Nazionale Di Documentazione Per L'Innovazione E La Ricerca Educativa

Ou Miksike

Bundesgymnasium Und Bundesrealgymnasium Schwechat

Aurus Kennis- En Trainingssystemen B.V.Bit Media E-Learning Solution Gmbh And Co Kg

The University Of Manchester

The Governing Council Of The University Of Toronto

De Praktijk, Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderwijs V.O.F.

Tartu Ulikool

Enovate As

Stichting Technasium

Stiftelsen Sintef Technology & Society

Siemens Aktiengesellschaft Oesterreich

Lean Enterprise Institute Polska Spolka Z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosc Ia

Virtech Ltd

Inovacijsko-Razvojni Institut Univerze V Ljubljani

Cyntelix Corporation Limited

Nokia Oyj

University College London

Healthware Spa - PhiUniversitaet Innsbruck

Engineering - Ingegneria Informatica Spa

Universita Degli Studi Di Milano

Amis Druzba Za Telekomunikacije D.O.O.

Empowertheuser Ltd

University Of Leeds

Friedrich-Alexander Universitaet Erlangen - Nuernberg

Universitaet Paderborn

London Metropolitan University

Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz

Soluciones Integrales De Formacion Y Gestion Structuralia, S.A

Pontydysgu Ltd

Alma Mater Studiorum-Universita Di Bologna

Compedia Software & Hardware Development Ltd

Sony France S.A.

Registered Nursing Home Association Limited

The City University

Tracoin Quality Bv

Regola Srl

Infoman Ag

Neurologische Klinik Gmbh Bad Neustadt

Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum

British Telecommunications Public Limited Company*

Verein Offenes Lernen

Boc Information Technologies Consulting Sp. Z.O.O.

Uni Research AsMto Psychologische Forschung Und Beratung Gmbh

Copenhagen Business School

Playgen Ltd

University Of The West Of Scotland

Fundacion Esade

Ministerul Apararii Nationale

Nato Undersea Research Centre

Centre Europeen D'Education Permanente

Universite Paul Sabatier Toulouse Iii

Tty-Saatio

Cyntelix Corporation Bv

Universidad Complutense De Madrid

Bundesministerium Für Unterricht, Kunst Und Kultur

Senter For Ikt I Utdanningen

Indire Istituto Nazionale Di Documentazione Per L'Innovazione E La Ricerca Educativa

Makash - Advancing Cmc Applications In Education, Culture And Science

Educatio Public Services Non-Profit Llc

Smart Technologies (Germany) Gmbh

Futurelab Education

Promethean Limited

National Ministry Of EducationEduca.Ch Institut Suissse Des Medias Pour La Formation Et La Culture

Instituto De Educação Da Universidade De Lisboa

Edubit Vzw

Facultes Universitaires Notre-Dame De La Paix Asbl

Universita Degli Studi Dell'Aquila

Universita Degli Studi Di Padova

Universidad De Salamanca

Amnin D.O.O Centr Za Znanstveno Vizualizacijo

Libera Universita Di Bolzano

Universita Degli Studi Di Verona

Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Moholy-Nagy Muveszeti Egyetem

University Of Sussex

National University Corporation, Kyoto University

Wageningen Universiteit

Gako Hojin Seikei Gakuen

Jacobs University Bremen Ggmbh

Takomat Johne, Schnatmann, Schwarz Gbr

Zentrum Fuer Graphische Datenverarbeitung E.V.

It University Of Copenhagen

University Of Bath

The Regents Of The University Of California

National Technical University Of Athens

Institut Für Angewandte Systemtechnik Bremen Gmbh

Eesti Opetajate Liit

Ini Doo

Faculty Of Organizational Sciences, University Of Belgrade

Athabasca University

Volkswagen Ag

The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem

Katholische Universitat Eichstatt-Ingolstadt

Saxo Bank As

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

Blekinge Tekniska HoegskolaLudwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen

Fundação Universidade De Brasilia

Central Laboratory Of General Ecology - Zentralna Laboratoriya Po Obschta Ekologiya

Tel Aviv University

University Of Hull

The British Institute For Learningand Development Lbg

U&I Learning Nv

Festo Lernzentrum Saar Gmbh

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Uppsala Universitet

University Of Haifa

Bar Ilan University

Morpheus Software Vof

Extrim Mintia Solousions Etaireia Pliroforikis Kai Tilepikoinonion Etaireia Periorismenis Efthinis

University Of Piraeus Research CenterStiftung Universitat Hildesheim

Space Applications Services Nv

European Aeronautic Defence And Spa

Innovation Service Network Podjetnisko In Poslovno Svetovanje D.O.O.

Industrie Und Handelskammer Darmstadt

Comnetmedia Ag

City University

Pouliadis Associates Corp

University Of Exeter

Acrosslimits Ltd

Siauliai Juventos Pagrindine Mokykla

Freundes Und Foerdererkreis Des Rabanus Maurus Gymnasiums Mainz E.V.

Siauliu Universitetas

Ceske Vysoke Uceni Technicke V Praze

Institutul National De Cercetare-Dezvoltare In Informatica - Ici Bucuresti Ra

Oxford Brookes University

The American University Of Paris

Czech E-Learning Network

Sveriges Exportrad

Ontdeknet Bv

La Cantoche Production

Tampereen Yliopisto

Institute Of Communication And Computer SystemsInstitute For Learning Innovation

At Bristol Limited

European Collaborative For Science, Industry And Technology Exhibitions

The Weizmann Institute Of Science

Universidade Do Minho

International Environment And Quality Services S.A.

Paedagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg

Lt Design Software Gmbh

Web Models S.R.L.

Abbeynet S.P.A.

Julius-Maximilians Universitaet WuerzburgThe University Of Hertfordshire Higher Education Corporation

Interagens Srl

Otto-Friedrich-Universitaet Bamberg

Karl-Franzens-Universitaet Graz

Universitaet Bremen

Broadview.Tv Gmbh

Association O.R.T.

Danshir Systems Ltd.

Valstybinis Informacines Technologijos Institutas

Ceska Televize

Univerzita Hradec Kralove

Centre De Recherche Public Henri Tudor

Cross Czech A.S.

Czech Efficient Learning Node

Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Centrum Zarzadzania Informacja

Mdr PartnersBerzsenyi Daniel Foiskola

Svietimo Ir Kulturos Mobiliuju Technologiju Institutas

Stendes Aprupes Un Attistibas Biedriba Mezazile

Ciber Espacio Sl

Siemens Aktiengesellschaft

Univerzita Tomase Bati Ve Zline

Isik University

Sibelius Software LimitedFundacion Isaac Albeniz

Fondazione Accademia Nazionale Di Santa CeciliaExitech S.R.L.

Stichting FnbInstitut De Recherche Et De Coordination Acoustique Musique - Ircam

The University Of Reading

Universita Degli Studi Di Firenze

Fist Sa - France Innovation Scientifique Et TransfertTamkang University Foundation

Universite Stendhal Grenoble 3

Icwe Gmbh

Instituto Superior De Engenharia De Coimbra

Universidade Catolica Portuguesa

Institut National Polytechnique De Grenoble

Cnotinfor - Centro De Novas Tecnologias Da Informacao, Limitada

Handelshoejskolen I Aarhus

Tele-Universite

Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia - Filozofiai Kutatointezet

Conception Realisation Edition Developpement Multimedia Credm

Universite Du Maine: Le Mans

National Endowment For Science, Technology And The Arts

Camporosso

Universidade De Tras-Os-Montes E Alto Douro

Stichting Hogeschool Van Utrecht

Birkbeck College

Donau-Universitaet Krems

University Of Aegean

Faculdade De Engenharia Da Universade Do Porto

Universite Des Sciences Et Technologies De Lille - Lille I

Oulun Yliopisto

Universitaet Zu Koeln

Universitad De Barcelona

Universite De LausanneThe Queen'S University Of Belfast

Universite Rene Descartes

Univerzita Komenskeho V Bratislave

University Of Limerick

University Of Patras

Helsingin Yliopisto

Skelleftea Kommun

Radvision Ltd

Poyry Forest Industry OyEvtek-Ammattikorkeakoulu

Tessera Multimedia S.A.

Ff Oo Forschungs & Entwicklungs Gmbh

Vysoka Skola Ekonomicka V Praze

Universite De NeuchatelTehnicheski Universitet Sofia

Institut National Polytechnique De Toulouse

Karolinska Institutet

Foundation For Research And Technology - Hellas

Technicka Univerzita V KosiciachUniversite Paris-Sud Xi

Icatt Interactive Media B.V.Association Pour La Recherche Et Le Developpement Des Methodes Et Processus Industriels

Univerzita Karlova V Praze

Universitatea Alexandru Ioan CuzaFundacao Da Faculdade De Ciencias Da Universidade De Lisboa

Universitaet Hamburg

Zuercher Hochschule Winterthur

Instytut Podstaw Informatyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk (Ipi Pan)

Pomorski Fakultet U Rijeci

Austrian Research Centers Gmbh - Arc

Anglia Ruskin University Higher Education Corporation

Sveuciliste U Rijeci, Filozofski Fakultet U Rijeci

Andragoski Zavod Maribor Ljudska Univerza

Schul-Und Ausbildungsberatung

Aster - Societa Consortile Per Azioni

Univerza V Mariboru

Geie Ercim

Eprep

Support It (Uk) Limited

Universite De Tlemcen

Mindonsite - Integral Coaching Sa

Universite De Fribourg

Institut National De Recherche En Informatique Et En Automatique

Association De L'Enseignement Superieur Commercial Rhone Alpes

Ecole Des Hautes Etudes Commerciales

Wuerttembergischer Genossenschaftsverband Raiffeisen/Schulze-Delitzsch E.V.

Bt Nederland Nv

Social Care Institute For Excellence

Eea S.R.O.

Qpr Software Oyj

Ids Scheer Ag

Universitaet Stuttgart

Unesco-Ihe Institute For Water Education

Stichting Surf

Software De Base Sa

Logicacmg Nederland B.V.

Stad Antwerpen

X/Open Company Limited

Eloki Limited

Apple Computer International

Medical University Plovdiv

Universite De Nice - Sophia Antipolis

Succubus Interactive

European Cervical Cancer Asociation

Democritus University Of Thrace

Situsi Limited

Universita Degli Studi Di Catania

Saint George'S Hospital Medical School

Strategisch Plan Kempen Vzw

Fondation Europeenne Pour Le Developpement Du Management Aisbl

Institute Of Technology And Development Foundation

Escp-Eap Europaeische Wirtschaftshochschule Berlin E.V.

Hypatia As

Vytauto Didziojo Universitetas

Technische Universitat Berlin

Sun Microsystems Gmbh

Mathcore Engineering Ab

Linkopings Universitet

Universitaet Basel

Computational Modelling Cambridge Limited

Association Européenne Des Expositions Scientifiques, Techniques Et Industrielles

Cite Des Sciences Et De L'Industrie

Deutsches Museum Von Meisterwerken Der Naturwissenschaft Und Technik

Lambrakis Foundation

Ainoouchaou Pliroforikis Ae

Csodak Palotaja Kulturalis Nonprofit Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag

Fondazione Museo Nazionale Della Scienza E Della Tecnologia Leonardo Da Vinci

Ciencia Viva-Agencia Nacional Para A Cultura Cientifica E Tecnologica

National Taiwan University

University Of Central Florida

Institute For The Study Of Knowledge Management In Education

Tampereen Teknillinen Yliopisto

Universitaet Kassel

Eurotype Ohg

Lesite.Tv G.I.E.

Klett Lernen Und Information Gmbh

Ministry Of National Education And Religious Affairs

Szamalk Oktatasi Es Informatikai Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag

Rai-Radiotelevisione Italiana Spa

Fondazione Maddalena Di Canossa

Companhia De Ideias Anonimas Comunicacao Social Lda

Centro Para El Desarrollo De Las Telecomunicaciones De Castilla Y Leon

Institut Telecom

Chambre De Commerce Et D'Industrie De ParisAkademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza Im. Stanisbawa Staszica W Krakowie

Young Digital Planet Sa*Ydp Sa

Vocabulary Management Group Limited

Rwcs Limited

Cambridge University Press (Holdings) Limited

Ethniko Diktyo Erevnas Technologias Ae

Bundesministerium Für Land- Und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt Und Wasserwirtschaft

Geoponiko Panepistimion Athinon

Magyar Okologiai Gazdalkodasert Egyesulet

Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem

Universitet For Miljo- Og Biovitenskap

Eesti Maaulikool

Universitatea De Stiinte Agronomice Si Medicina Veterinara - Bucuresti

Universidad De Alcala

Padagogische Hochschule Schwabisch Gmund

Jihoceska Univerzita V Ceskych Budejovicich

Cabrilog Sas

Universite Du Luxembourg

Maths For More Sl

Fondazione Europea Per La Genetica

Telelingua International Sa

European Society Of Human Genetics

The Cyprus Foundation For Muscular Dystrophy Research

Fakultni Nemocnice V Motole

Universite Paris Descartes

Bereich Humanmedizin Der Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen

Se.Ge.Sta. Srl

Alinari 24 Ore SpaVilniaus Universitetas

Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam

Academisch Ziekenhuis Leiden - Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum

University Of PlymouthUniversity Of Newcastle Upon Tyne

The University Of Sheffield

Diethneis Ypiresies Perivallontos Kai Poiotitas Meletes Efarmoges Anonymi Etaireia

Shumenski Universitet Episkop Konst

Helsingin Kaupunki

European Physical Society

Foundation For Research And Technology Hellas

Liverpool John Moores University Higher Education Corporation

Universitaetsklinikum Heidelberg

Private Universitaet Witten/Herdecke Ggmbh

Uniwersytet Jagiellonski

Universitatea De Medicina Si Farmacie Iuliu Hatieganu Cluj-Napoca

Universiteit Maastricht

Hendel Sascha - Internetdienstleistungen Im Architektursektor

Fachhochschule Potsdam

Universita Politecnica Delle Marche

Universita Iuav Di Venezia

Nautes Srl

Collaboratorio S.N.C. Di Barzon Furio & C.Universitat Politecnica De Catalunya

Opetushallitus

Skolavefurinn Ehf

Menntamalaraduneytid

Department Of Education And Science

Ministerio De Educación, Política Social Y Deporte

Generalitat De Catalunya

The National Agency For Education In Sweden

Contento Svenska Aktiebolag

Cambridge Hitachisoft Educational Solutions Plc

Siemens It Solutions And Services Sa

Microsoft Nv

Ies Egitim Ve Bilgi Teknolojileri As

Rtb Egitim Cozumleri Limited Sirketi

European Schools

Intel Performance Learning Solutions Limited

Middle East Technical UniversityItaldata S.P.A.

Fva Sas Di Louis Ferrini & C

Athens Laboratory Of Business Administration

Alphalabs Sarl

Oesterreichische Studiengesellschaft Fuer Kybernetik

Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore

Metis-Net Etairia Periorismenis Evthinis

Isvor Fiat Societa Consortile Di Sviluppo E Addestramento Industriale Per AzioniUnicredit Produzioni Accentrate Societa Per Azioni

Universitat St Gallen

Universitaet Der Bundeswehr Muenchen

University Of Strathclyde

Talent Anonymos Etairia Pliroforikis

European Universities Continuing Education Network

Fakultet Prirodoslovno-Matematickih Znanosti I Odgojnih Podrucja Sveucilista U Splitu

Cambridge Training And Development Limited

Extreme Media Solutions Ltd

University Of East Anglia

Institute For Language And Speech Processing

Asociatia Tehne - Centrul Pentru Dezvoltare Si Inovare In Educatie

Philippos Nakas Music House

Uab Balteck

Grame

Esteam Ab

Dzs, Zaloznistvo In Trgovina D.D.

Istituto Geografico De Agostini S.P.A.

Talent Anonimos Etaireia Pleroforikes

Grupo Anaya S.A.

Cyprus Pedagogical InstitutePearson Education Ltd

T. & B. E Associati Srl

Stichting Expertisecentrum Voor Taxonomische Identificaties

Julius Kühn-Institut

Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas

University Of Tartu

Prirodoslovni Muzej Slovenije

Bikam Eood

Natural History Museum

Sun Microsystems Belgium NvApertus Tavoktatas-Fejlesztesi Modszertani Kozpont Tanacsado Es Szolgaltato Kozhasznu Tarsasag

Ministerstwo Edukacji Narodowej Dum Zahranicnich Sluzeb

Tovek Spol. S.R.O.

Ministerie Van De Vlaamse Gemeenschap

Taideteollinen Korkeakoulu

Universite De Pau Et Des Pays De L'Adour

Science And Technology Facilities Council

Etaireia Erevnas Kai Epimorfosis Stis Technologies Tis Pliroforias

Europaisches Microsoft Innovations Center Gmbh

Cs Systemes D'Information Sa

University Of Southampton

Centrale Recherche S.A.

Hellenic Open University

Centro Di Eccellenza Su Metodi E Sistemi Per L'Apprendimento E La Conoscenza

The University Of Dundee

The University Court Of The University Of St Andrews

Universidad De Malaga

The University Of Edinburgh

European Research And Project Office Gmbh

The University Of Glasgow

Antenna Hungaria Magyar Musorszoro Radiohirkozlesi Reszvenytarsasag

Institute Of Information Technologies - Bulgarian Academy Of Sciences

European Distance And E-Learning Network

Institute Of Mathematics And Informatics - Bulgarian Academy Of Sciences

Eduweb Multimedia Technologia Es Tavoktatasi ReszvenytarsasgIng. Gejza Bodon Exos Consulting

Sofia Digital Oy

Fondation Maison Des Sciences De L'Homme

Universite D' Angers

Budapesti Muszaki Es Gazdasagtudomanyi Egyetem

Institut National De L'Audiovisuel

Consorzio Per La Ricerca E L'Educazione Permanente, Torino

Technical University Of Crete

University Of Brighton

Fig. 2. Partner collaborations spanning FP6, FP7, and eContentplus TEL projects.

by PageRank, a metric that not only takes into account the number of edgesof each node, but also the “importance” of the adjacent neighbor nodes [15].This means, an organization’s importance depends on the number of collabo-rations with other organizations and on the importance of the organization’scollaborators.

Table 3. Top 10 organizations by PageRank.

# Organization PR BC LC DC Funding

1 The Open University, United Kingdom .0125 [1] .1185 [1] .2151 [601] 219 [1] 3.55 [3]

2 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium .0090 [2] .0752 [2] .1716 [604] 148 [3] 2.56 [6]

3 Open Universiteit Nederland, Netherlands .0086 [3] .0414 [6] .2161 [600] 133 [7] 3.45 [4]

4 Jyvaskylan Yliopisto, Finland .0080 [4] .0667 [3] .3170 [588] 170 [2] 1.26 [39]

5 Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung derAngewandten Forschung E.V., Germany

.0068 [5] .0529 [4] .1833 [603] 111 [22] 3.40 [5]

6 Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuen-stliche Intelligenz Gmbh, Germany

.0066 [6] .0390 [7] .1916 [602] 106 [27] 3.68 [1]

7 Atos Origin Sociedad Anonima Espanola,Spain

.0064 [7] .0236 [15] .4316 [565] 142 [5] 1.33 [33]

8 Universitaet Graz, Austria .0064 [8] .0230 [18] .4016 [573] 148 [3] 2.03 [10]

9 Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands .0061 [9] .0203 [23] .4323 [564] 139 [6] 1.62 [19]

10 INESC ID - Instituto de Engenharia de Sis-temas e Computadores, Investigacao e De-senvolvimento em Lisboa, Portugal

.0061 [10] .0368 [8] .4741 [552] 130 [8] 1.68 [16]

PR. . . PageRank — BC. . . Betweenness centrality — LC. . . Local clustering coefficient —DC. . . Degree centrality — Funding. . . EC contribution to the project cost in million Euro. Notethat CORDIS states the total funding for each project. The funding per consortium member foreach project was computed by dividing the total EC contribution to that project by the number ofconsortium members. This should give a good estimate.

The European TEL Projects Community 9

Fig. 3. Strongest organizational ties in FP6, FP7, and eContentplus TEL projects.

The top partnership bonds across all TEL projects are displayed in Fig. 3.The figure shows the 22 collaboration pairs (edges) between organizations (nodes)that are based on at least four projects (the number of projects is displayed asa label for each edge). Assuming that partnership is only continued from suc-cessful previous collaborations, we can conjecture that those projects where theorganization pairs displayed in Fig. 3 were involved can be flagged as havinglasting impact, at least in terms of continuity in research collaborations. Themost important of these projects, ordered by frequency of partnerships, are:

1. PROLEARN (FP6): 16 pairs,2. ICOPER (eContentplus): 10 pairs,3. OpenScout (eContentplus): 9 pairs,4. GRAPPLE (FP7): 8 pairs,5. STELLAR (FP7), ROLE (FP7), PROLIX (FP6): 5 pairs.

It is evident that the PROLEARN network of excellence that co-kicked offFP6 succeeded in creating and sustaining strong partnerships, while the KALEI-DOSCOPE network of excellence, which started at the same time as PRO-LEARN, did not achieve this despite its much larger consortium.

6 Time Series Analysis

The previous figures all took the current status of collaborations and projects asa basis for calculating social network metrics. To understand the dynamics of theprojects and their consortium collaborations this section presents the develop-ment of SNA metrics of the collaboration network over time, starting from 2004when the first FP6 projects were launched, up to the year 2010 (inclusive). Theyears 2011 and 2012 were omitted from the analyses since no new TEL projectswere launched in FP7 and eContentplus after 2010 to date.

10 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

Fig. 4 shows that in FP6 the first set of (eight) projects launched in 2004introduced 4,199 distinct collaboration connections among 157 organizations inthe TEL landscape. This massive entry number is mainly due to the KALEIDO-SCOPE network of excellence, which was launched with an extraordinary largeconsortium of 83 partners. In Fig. 5 we see that the diameter of the network—i.e.the longest shortest path through the network—has reached its peak in 2006,after only 2 years; in 2010, the diameter shrunk to a value of 4, which meansthat one or more projects have introduced direct connections between previouslydistant partners. It also shows that the average path length has been stable at avalue of around 2.5 since 2006. This means that each organization is on averageconnected to each other organization by only two intermediate organizations.This indicates that the collaboration network is extremely tightly knit.

Until 2010, the number of organizations involved in TEL projects almostquadrupled (3.9-fold), while the number of project-based collaboration ties be-tween those organizations slightly more than doubled (2.2-fold) during the sametime window (cf. Fig. 4). This gap can partly be explained by Fig. 6, whichshows that although there has been a steady flow of new projects, these projectshave added fewer and fewer new organizations to the picture, exposing a dropfrom 8.1 new organizations per new project in 2006 to a value of 4.8 in 2010.

Fig. 8 demonstrates that the average size of the consortia of newly launchedprojects has been relatively stable since 2005, ranging between 10.9 and 14.1.In contrast, the average share of newly introduced organizations per launchedproject has dropped from 66% in 2005 to 40% in 2010. The sharpest drop isevident for projects that started in the year 2008 (from 62% to 42%); this wasthe year when the first six FP7 projects plus three new eContentplus projectswere launched (cf. Fig. 9). At the transition from FP6 to FP7 and eContentplus,the project consortia apparently resorted to an established core of members.

While Fig. 7 shows that new projects have introduced a relatively stablenumber of new collaboration ties to the landscape in recent years, Fig. 10 demon-strates that the average number of new collaboration ties created by each or-ganization making its debut in TEL projects has, after an initial fall between2004 and 2005, increased from 7.9 in 2005 to 17.7 in 2010. Hence, starting toparticipate in TEL projects has an increasingly positive effect in terms of newcollaborations with other organizations involved in TEL.

The project participation data shows that of the 34 TEL projects launchedbetween 2008 and 2010, 20% were coordinated by organizations which had notparticipated in any previous (or at that time running) TEL project. The devel-opment of this percentage over time is plotted in Fig. 11. The sharp increasein 2007 is likely due to eContentplus, where the focus shifted to e-content andmetadata, and thus new organizations were introduced. The data shows thateven for total “newbie organizations” in TEL it is absolutely feasible to write asuccessful project proposal in the coordinator role.

However, the tendency evident in most of the figures in this section points inanother direction; it appears that there is less and less demand for new organi-zations in the TEL community. One the one hand, this is understandable: if an

The European TEL Projects Community 11

organization launches a new project it is likely to resort to partners it has alreadysuccessfully collaborated with, particularly as more competing organizations areentering the community every year. On the other hand, it shows that projectconsortia and collaboration ties between organizations behave like an inertialmass, which impedes the involvement of new and fresh organizations, and likelyalso new ideas and research foci.

157

257

371423

476542

6044,1994,987

6,0476,607

7,4098,234

9,330

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

OrganizationsCollaborations

Fig. 4. Organizational collaborationnetwork: Nodes and edges.

3

4

5 5 5 5

4

1.742.18

2.46 2.52 2.51 2.50 2.50

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Diameter

Avg. Path Length

Fig. 5. Organizational collaborationnetwork: Network measures.

8

14 14

7 9

1213

19.6

7.18.1 7.4

5.9 5.5 4.80

5

10

15

20

25

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

New ProjectsNew Organizations per New Project

Fig. 6. New organizations introducedby newly launched projects.

8

14 14

7

9

1213

525

56 76 80 89 69 84

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

0

5

10

15

20

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

New ProjectsNew Collaborations per New Project

Fig. 7. New collaboration ties intro-duced by newly launched projects.

85%

66% 67%62%

42% 44% 40%

23.0

10.9 12.1 12.0 14.1 12.6 11.9

05101520253035404550

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Ratio of New Organizations in Consortia of New ProjectsAvg. Consortium Size of New Projects

Fig. 8. New organizations in consortiaof new projects.

47

35

6

7

13

8

14

10

0123456789

101112131415

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

New projects per programme per yearFP6FP7eContentplus

Fig. 9. Number of launched projects byyear and programme.

26.7

7.99.3

10.8

15.112.5

17.7

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

New Collaborations perNew Organization

Fig. 10. New collaboration ties intro-duced by new organizations.

88%

50%43%

86%

11%

25% 23%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Ratio of Projects with NoviceParticipants as Coordinator

Fig. 11. Novice organizations asproject coordinators.

12 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

7 Key Findings

Funding Bridge. While there are strong ties between FP6 and FP7 in termsof participating organizations, it was demonstrated that eContentplus acted as abroker between FP6 and FP7 project consortia. Particularly some Best PracticeNetworks like ASPECT or ICOPER, and also Targeted Projects like OpenScout,have many strong consortium overlaps with both preceding FP6 projects andsucceeding FP7 projects. This pattern is probably simply due to the fact that in2007 there were neither new project launches in FP6 nor in FP7. On the otherhand it could also be attributed to a plain “research follows money” attitude.That is, if there had not been funding from eContentplus, organizations wouldlikely have looked for funding opportunities in TEL related programmes withdifferent focus between 2006 and 2008. Anyway, eContentplus apparently wassupportive and non-disruptive for the organizational collaboration network inEuropean TEL. A question for future research would be whether other fundingschemes that do not explicitly carry the “Technology Enhanced Learning” labelhave similar effects on the project and collaboration landscape.

Role of Project Type. Integrated Projects (IP) and Networks of Excellence(NoE) are prominently placed among those projects with the highest impact onsuccessor projects, whereby this cannot solely be ascribed solely to the larger sizecompared to e.g. STREPs. For instance, these projects, along with some large e-Contentplus consortia, typically also include multiple pairs of organizations thatappear in the network of the most frequent collaborators. This indicates that IPsand NoEs are very important not only for shaping the research agenda, but alsofor creating strong and sustained collaboration ties between TEL organizations.

TEL Family. With every new TEL project, relatively fewer organizations arepenetrating the existing overall collaboration network in TEL projects. Over thelast three years, an average of 40% of the consortia of new projects was not previ-ously involved in any TEL projects. The sharpest drop in this number occurredfor projects that started in the year 2008 (from 62% to 42%), when the first FP7TEL projects were launched. It appears that at the transition to FP7, the projectconsortia—and ultimately the European Commission—resorted to building onand funding an established core of organizations, thus strengthening existing col-laboration bonds. This has lead to a tightly knit family-like community of TELorganizations, an inertial mass that can impede the involvement of new organi-zations. This is strengthened by the fact that of the 34 launched TEL projectssince 2008, four out of five are being coordinated by organizations that have al-ready participated in at least one previous TEL project. In [4], the authors alsoconclude from their analyses of FPs 1–4 that the European Research Area buildson a “robust backbone structure” of frequent collaborators. A similar conclusioncan be found in [5], where the authors identified a core of established actors withincreasing integration over time. In [7] the authors go even further and call thisbackbone of partners with long-standing and extremely tight collaboration tiesthe “oligarchic core” of the FPs. In the light of these related studies, we canstate that the TEL community exposes similar bonding characteristics as the

The European TEL Projects Community 13

complete Framework Programme networks. Of course, from the EC’s viewpointit seems reasonable to fund projects where a large share of the consortium haveprevious experience in EC-funded TEL projects. Still, this appears to be a policyissue that requires attention.

8 Conclusion

This paper has reported analyses, results and implications of the applicationof social network analysis on European Commission funded TEL projects toprovide stakeholders with an overview on historic development and the currentstate. The three key findings we distilled are that organizations are resourceful infinding alternative funding opportunities; that integrated projects and networksof excellence have a central role in shaping the collaboration landscape; andthat the collaboration ties within and across TEL projects in Europe exposecharacteristics of oligarchic structures.

There are several limitations in the current data sources and the analyses,which will have to be addressed in forthcoming work. Most importantly, theprojects dataset currently exclusively contains TEL related projects from FP6,FP7 and eContentplus. There are many additional sources and projects thatcould be included, e.g. the Lifelong Learning Programme, additional projectsfrom the EC’s Policy Support Programme, the UK JISC funded projects, andmany more. Additionally, several projects have strong associate partnership pro-grammes and funded sub-projects (e.g. STELLAR theme teams) that could beintegrated into the analyses. Also, we currently have descriptive project meta-data only and do not consider project deliverables. These would significantlyaugment the potential analysis toolbox with text mining, topic modeling, andinformation on involved researchers. Finally, the funded projects analyzed in thispaper likely represent only a small fraction of the actual collaboration network,since the competition in TEL calls is fierce with very low success rates. It wouldtherefore be worthwhile to include unsuccessful project proposals in the analysis.

To keep interested stakeholders up-to-date with facts and figures from theTEL projects community we deployed a widget-based dashboard [16] for visualinteraction with the Mediabase data sources in the Learning Frontiers portal2.The next update to the TEL projects data set will arrive later this year, whenseveral new TEL projects will be funded from bids submitted to FP7 ICT Call8. It remains to be seen how the results of this call will impact the project andcollaboration networks. Projecting the past onto the future, we can expect thatthe new projects to be mainly composed of established organizations, with a fewnew ones hopefully entering the scene.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the European Commission through the FP7 ICTCoordination and Support Action TEL-Map (FP7 257822).

2 http://learningfrontiers.eu/?q=dashboard

14 Michael Derntl and Ralf Klamma

References

1. Klamma, R., Spaniol, M., Cao, Y., Jarke, M.: Pattern-Based Cross Media SocialNetwork Analysis for Technology Enhanced Learning in Europe. In Nejdl, W.,Tochtermann, K., eds.: Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing– EC-TEL 2006. LNCS, vol. 4227, Springer-Verlag (2006) 242–256

2. Petrushyna, Z., Klamma, R.: No Guru, No Method, No Teacher: Self-classificationand Self-modelling of E-Learning Communities. In Dillenbourg, P., Specht, M.,eds.: Times of Convergence – EC-TEL 2008. LNCS, vol. 5192, Springer-Verlag(2008) 354–365

3. Voigt, C., ed.: 4th Evaluation Report – Including Social Network Analysis. Deliv-erable D7.5, STELLAR Nework of Excellence. (2011)

4. Barber, M., Krueger, A., Krueger, T., Roediger-Schluga, T.: Network of EuropeanUnion–funded collaborative research and development projects. Physical ReviewE 73(3) (2006)

5. Roediger-Schluga, T., Barber, M.J.: R&D collaboration networks in the Euro-pean Framework Programmes: data processing, network construction and selectedresults. International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy 4(3/4) (2008)321–347

6. Frachisse, D., Billand, P., Massard, N.: The Sixth Framework Program as anAffiliation Network: Representation and Analysis. http://ssrn.com/abstract=

1117966 (2008)7. Breschi, S., Cusmano, L.: Unveiling the texture of a European Research Area:

emergence of oligarchic networks under EU Framework Programmes. InternationalJournal of Technology Management 27(8) (2004) 747–772

8. Lozano, S., Duch, J., Arenas, A.: Analysis of large social datasets by communitydetection. The European Physical Journal Special Topics 143(1) (2007) 257–259

9. Scherngell, T., Barber, M.J.: Spatial interaction modelling of cross-region R&Dcollaborations: empirical evidence from the 5th EU framework programme. Papersin Regional Science 88(3) (2009) 531–546

10. Roediger-Schluga, T., Dachs, B.: Does technology affect network structure? - Aquantitative analysis of collaborative research projects in two specific EU pro-grammes. UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series 041 (2006)

11. Derntl, M., Klamma, R.: Social Network Analysis of European Project Consortiato Reveal Impact of Technology-Enhanced Learning Projects. In: 12th IEEE Int.Conf. on Advanced Learning Technologies, ICALT 2012, IEEE (2012)

12. European Commission: Community Research and Development Information Ser-vice (CORDIS). http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.html

13. Derntl, M., Renzel, D., Klamma, R.: Mapping the European TEL Project Land-scape Using Social Network Analysis and Advanced Query Visualization. In: 1stInt. Workshop on Enhancing Learning with Ambient Displays and VisualizationTechniques (ADVTEL 2011). (2011)

14. Brandes, U., Erlebach, T., eds.: Network Analysis: Methodological Foundations.Springer (2005)

15. Brin, S., Page, L.: The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine.Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 30 (1998) 107–117

16. Derntl, M., Erdtmann, S., Klamma, R.: An Embeddable Dashboard for Widget-Based Visual Analytics on Scientific Communities. In: 12th Int. Conf. on Knowl-edge Management and Knowledge Technologies, I-KNOW 2012, ACM (2012)