Corpora: ACL-02 Workshop CFP: Effective Tools and Methodologies for Teaching NLP and CL

[Priscilla Rasmussen]

      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 at 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 at ling.ohio-state.edu
Dragomir Radev (co-chair), University of Michigan, radev at umich.edu

Robert Dale, Macquarie University, rdale at mpce.mq.edu.au
Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, gh at cs.toronto.edu
Eduard Hovy, USC/ISI, hovy at isi.edu
Andy Kehler, University of California, San Diego, kehler at ling.ucsd.edu
Lillian Lee, Cornell University, llee at cs.cornell.edu
Gina Levow, University of Chicago, levow at cs.uchicago.edu
Diane Litman, University of Pittsburgh, litman at cs.pitt.edu
Chris Manning, Stanford University, manning at cs.stanford.edu
James Martin, University of Colorado, martin at cs.colorado.edu
Detmar Meurers, Ohio State University, dm at ling.ohio-state.edu
Massimo Poesio, University of Essex, poesio at essex.ac.uk
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University, jamesp at cs.brandeis.edu
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, ereiter at csd.abdn.ac.uk
Philip Resnik, University of Maryland, resnik at umiacs.umd.edu
Ellen Riloff, University of Utah, riloff at cs.utah.edu
Matt Stone, Rutgers University, mdstone at cs.rutgers.edu
Rich Thomason, University of Michigan, rich at thomason.org
Hans Uszkoreit, University of the Saarland and DFKI, uszkoreit at dfki.de
Bonnie Webber, University of Edinburgh, bonnie at dai.ed.ac.uk
Dekai Wu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, dekai at cs.ust.hk