Learning analytics and educational data mining: towards communication and collaboration

Growing interest in data and analytics in education, teaching, and learning raises the priority for increased, high-quality research into the models, methods, technologies, and impact of analytics. Two research communities -- Educational Data Mining (EDM) and Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) have developed separately to address this need. This paper argues for increased and formal communication and collaboration between these communities in order to share research, methods, and tools for data mining and analysis in the service of developing both LAK and EDM fields.