Even today Education stands on the list of grand challenges of the 21st  century. There are two major areas which cover the breadth(involves reaching broader audience with common goals, and rising literacy level across the globe) and depth(effective and clear learning) of the challenges in education. Carnegie Mellon University played host to the conferences on the use of computers in education. Educational data mining is all about using data gathered from educational services or tools(includes user data or student data), and mine it to find knowledge which when applied would aid the user with better service offering(improved learning or faster efficient learning).

The Third International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM2010), which was held June 11-13, and the10th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS2010), June 14-18 were held on carnegie mellon campus. The conferences are a clear sign that the educational data mining is emerging into a strong research area.

[Read Dr. Dobbs]