This paper presents a study describing the development of an Evaluation Framework (EF) for data competitions in TEL. The study applies the Group Concept Method (GCM) to empirically depict criteria and their indicators for evaluating software applications in TEL. A statistical analysis including multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering on the GCM data identified the following six evaluation criteria: 1.Educational Innovation, 2.Usability, 3.Data, 4.Performance, 5.Privacy, and 6.Audience. Each of them was operationalized through a set of indicators. The resulting Evaluation Framework (EF) incorporating these criteria was applied to the first data competition of the LinkedUp project. The EF was consequently improved using the results from reviewers' interviews, which were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. The outcome of these efforts is a comprehensive EF that can be used for TEL data competitions and for the evaluation of TEL tools in general. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11200-8_6.