EFFECTIVE TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR TEACHING NLP AND CL
An ACL 2002 Workshop
July 7, 2002 (the day before the main conference)
Philadelphia, PA, USA
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev/TeachingNLP
Co-chairs:
Chris Brew, Ohio State University
Dragomir Radev, University of Michigan
INTRODUCTION
Natural Language Processing (and Computational Linguistics) courses
have been enjoying a large interest in the last few years. More and
more universities are offering both introductory and advanced
classes. Over the years, faculty from different departments have been
developing their classes by introducing and refining new lectures,
software, and projects. Some of the main challenges in teaching NLP
are:
1. Teaching to a diverse audience, consisting of a mix of students in
Linguistics, Computer Science, Information Science, and
Bioinformatics; both undergraduate and graduate; and with a wide
range of proficiency in linguistics, computer theory, or
programming.
2. Selecting an appropriate focus for a course, e.g., theory
vs. applications, symbolic vs. empirical, text-only
vs. text+speech, etc.
3. Finding an appropriate place of an NLP/CL course within a larger
curriculum, e.g., in Artificial Intelligence, Computational
Linguistics, Cognitive Science, or Language Engineering.
4. Finding the right links to related areas, such as Theoretical
Linguistics, Information Retrieval, Speech Science, Cognitive
Science, Artificial Intelligence, or Genetic/Molecular Biology.
5. Choosing appropriate assignments to provide the right mix of
theoretical, programming and data analysis exercises.
6. Designing software for educational purposes and developing
tutorials on existing software.
This ACL workshop on Effective Tools and Methodologies for Teaching
NLP/CL will address these challenges. The workshop will bring together
college faculty with experience in teaching such courses as well as
future teachers (e.g., current graduate students).
CALL FOR PAPERS
We will be soliciting short papers (4-6 pages) on the following
topics:
1. Effective course lectures
2. Innovative assignments and projects
3. Educational software
4. Web resources
5. Curriculum issues (e.g., developing an effective multi-course CL
program)
6. Teaching NLP in different departments: Computer Science,
Linguistics, Information Science, etc.
7. Connecting teaching and research
8. Seminar-style courses
9. Choice of programming languages (and programming requirements in
general)
10. Teaching NLP in languages other than English
11. Evaluation issues (outcomes assessment, educational measurement,
etc.)
In addition to these papers, the organizers will be collecting
pointers to educational resources on the Web, including course notes,
assignments, tutorials, software, and demos.
The workshop will feature a panel discussing longer-term activities
such as a mailing list for instructors, an archive of educational
materials, etc.
Submissions should be formatted according to the ACL style guide
(http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~lindek/acl02/style) and must be in either
PS, PDF, or DOC format. These should be sent electronically to
radev@umich.edu by the deadline shown below. Hard copies will be
accepted only if the authors explicitly make such arrangements the
co-chairs at least one week prior to the official submission date. In
that case, the hard copies will still have to arrive by the submission
date.
We will assemble printed proceedings, however the ultimate goal of
this workshop would be laying the groundwork for further professional
collaboration in teaching NLP/CL, creating an ACL SIG, and building a
clearinghouse for educational materials.
IMPORTANT DATES
Papers due: March 29, 2002
Acceptance or rejection notification: April 22, 2002
Camera-ready versions due: May 17, 2002
Workshop: July 07, 2002
REGISTRATION
Registration fees are $50 for regular participants and $0 (free) for
up to 10 lower income participants (e.g., graduate students and/or
participants from Eastern Europe, Africa, and other disadvantaged
areas of the world).
Candidates for registration fee waivers should indicate their interest
to the program co-chairs by April 22. Authors of accepted papers will
have priority, then authors of rejected papers, then all others.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Chris Brew (co-chair), Ohio State University, cbrew@ling.ohio-state.edu
Dragomir Radev (co-chair), University of Michigan, radev@umich.edu
Robert Dale, Macquarie University, rdale@mpce.mq.edu.au
Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, gh@cs.toronto.edu
Eduard Hovy, USC/ISI, hovy@isi.edu
Andy Kehler, University of California, San Diego, kehler@ling.ucsd.edu
Lillian Lee, Cornell University, llee@cs.cornell.edu
Gina Levow, University of Chicago, levow@cs.uchicago.edu
Diane Litman, University of Pittsburgh, litman@cs.pitt.edu
Chris Manning, Stanford University, manning@cs.stanford.edu
James Martin, University of Colorado, martin@cs.colorado.edu
Detmar Meurers, Ohio State University, dm@ling.ohio-state.edu
Massimo Poesio, University of Essex, poesio@essex.ac.uk
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University, jamesp@cs.brandeis.edu
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, ereiter@csd.abdn.ac.uk
Philip Resnik, University of Maryland, resnik@umiacs.umd.edu
Ellen Riloff, University of Utah, riloff@cs.utah.edu
Matt Stone, Rutgers University, mdstone@cs.rutgers.edu
Rich Thomason, University of Michigan, rich@thomason.org
Hans Uszkoreit, University of the Saarland and DFKI, uszkoreit@dfki.de
Bonnie Webber, University of Edinburgh, bonnie@dai.ed.ac.uk
Dekai Wu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, dekai@cs.ust.hk
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