[Corpora-List] Data-Driven Learning materials

[Krishnamurthy, Ramesh]

I agree with all of Martin's comments - and could add a few more logistical, financial and administrative problems from recent experience....
It's taken us the best part of 3 years to get an internal web-accessed multilingual corpus system operational at Aston (launched June 2007).

Iztok Kosem will be talking about some aspects of corpus tools/interfaces and user-friendliness at TALC.

Provision of copious documentation, help files, tutorials, etc is a current concern, as well as brief introductory sessions to assist and ensure take-up by language-teaching colleagues.
Extending awareness to non-language disciplines is another short-term goal.

We're piloting some small-scale practical usage projects, referential and DDL, and I'll be talking about some of these ideas at the Aston Corpus Symposium on May 23rd.

And we're also discussing and planning ways of making the system available beyond Aston (technical, copyright, etc) in the not too distant future.

Best
Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Lecturer in English Studies, School of Languages and Social Sciences,
Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812 ; Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766 [Room NX08, 10th
Floor, North Wing of Main Building]
http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/school/staff/krishnamurthyr.jsp
Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/

From: corpora-bounces at uib.no on behalf of Martin Wynne
[martin.wynne at oucs.ox.ac.uk]
Sent: 16 April 2008 17:02
To: Gill Philip
Cc: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Data-Driven Learning materials

I very much agree with Gill's observations. Looking what is freely available on the web is not a good way to judge the uptake or range of DDL materials. As Gill points out, most DDL resources and courses are only deployed locally.

To get something useful out on the web, you need to sort out the following (to name but a few):
- getting it on a web server
- basing it on web technologies
- get it to work with the available back end technologies on your server
- make sure that it is accessible and works with a variety of browsers
- make sure it is robust and bug-free
- support by the web server's sysadmin
- the exercises need to be suitable for unsupervised work (which requires a lot more documentation, explanation, hand-holding, controlled revealing of results, tips and hints, etc)
- be prepared to support users, or leave them in the lurch if they hit snags
- ensure that you are not getting into any legal or ethical difficulties if you publish any of the the materials (in short, you're not likely to be allowed to put that corpus online...)

So getting your course materials to work on your students' PCs is one thing, putting them on the web may involve a lot of additional challenges.

Obviously there are huge potential advantages to putting materials on the web, but we shouldn't be surprised that not everyone does it.

Martin
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