SPEECH COMMUNICATION SCIENCES &
ADVANCED COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES
JEWELS
Database on Educational Materials and Tools in Language and Speech
Specification
This text is a specification of the Database on Educational Materials
and Tools in Language and Speech, as agreed on by representatives from
the SCS and ACO*HUM projects (dissemination phase). The reader
is also referred to the following documents:
Aim
The aim is to provide information on materials for education and training
in language and speech. The emphasis is on materials available in
electronic form, on the Web or otherwise. The information will be
collected and made available as a database which is searchable and extensible
by outside users via the web.
Material types
The following types of materials are considered for inclusion in the database.
It is the intention that items in all these categories must have educational
relevance in the field of language and speech, and must either be available
in electronic form or make direct reference to electronic items (for instance,
a book accompanied by a CD-ROM).
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Course or tutorial (self-contained, electronic on the Internet or CD-ROM)
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Course notes (not part of course)
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Exercise set (not part of course)
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Demo
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Tool (usable for training, also kit of several tools, also hardware)
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Corpus
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Lexicon
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Grammar
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Textbook (printed)
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E-journal (with educational relevance)
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Inventory
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Handbook or other reference work
Material descriptions
These materials will be listed in a database that is browsable and searchable
on the web. The following database fields are provided for each item:
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Name of the item (free text)
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Medium (menu: CD-ROM, Printed, Video, Audio or Internet)
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Where available? (publisher and/or URL)
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Year of publication
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Version or edition
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Author or editor (person name + institution + email; multiple values when
multiple authors)
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Type (menu of the material types listed above)
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Platform requirements (free text)
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Subject field (menu: SLE, Phonetics, CD, CL, NEL)
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Topics (choose one or more keywords)
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Language of presentation (menu)
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Languages that are the object of study (menu, multiple values)
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Main features with respect to pedagogy, interface and/or navigation (choose
one or more keywords: multiple-choice exercises, open exercises, solutions
to exercises, illustrations, student tracking, notes, index, references,
sound samples, interactive listening test, on-line exercises, on-line interactive
demo, instructor feedback, glossary, annotated bibliography/further reading...
or enter new keyword)
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Level of audience (menu: introductory, intermediate or advanced)
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Description and special features (free text, e.g. many realistic exercises)
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Limitations and caveats (free text, e.g. not tested on significant student
numbers)
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Illustration (URL to screen shot or other illustration)
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Free of charge? (menu: yes or no)
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Associated materials (reference to other database entries; multiple values)
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Person submitting and date of submission, with email address
Not all fields are obligatory, e.g. illustration is optional. Unless
a field has free text, consensus must be reached on a set of keywords (e.g.
avoid that one entry has "multiple choice ex." while the other has "MC
exercises"), although the list of keywords must be dynamically extensible.
Translations of the keywords and fields to different languages will be
considered. For every field, there will be help and suggestions or examples.
There must be room for feedback on desired new fields.
Data collection and maintenance
Initial database contents have been provided on the basis of relevant materials
collected by the subject expert groups for the different fields.
This initial content will be transferred to the JEWELS site.
The intention is that the public can submit new data continuously.
An editor will be appointed, who has a supervising task with respect to
new submissions.
Access, submission and modification
There will be no requirement to log in or register before accessing the
database either for searching or submitting new material.
The data have the form of reviews of materials and can be submitted
by anyone; however, entry by authors of the reviewed materials may be preferable
to entry by others. The editor is automatically notified of new submissions,
which are made accessible to the general public only after acceptance by
the editor. The editor must check with the author if different from
the submitting person. The editor therefore needs a way to make submitted
but not yet accepted entries visible to the author, but not to the general
public. Modifications of earlier submissions are handled by a versioning
system. Authors of submitted reviews can modify their entries. There
will be no limitation to Europe.
Anyone will be able submit comments to reviews, which are immediately
made accessible. Comments are also automatically mailed to the editor,
who can remove comments if needed. Comments must be signed. There
will be no rating system.
Instructions for submitting new entries
There should be help in small popup windows when the mouse is over the
field name.
The page for submitting new entries should contain the following instructions:
If you want to submit a new entry, please check if an entry
for the item is already present. If so, you may provide comments
or modify an entry rather than submitting a new entry. These possibilities
are provided when viewing a particular entry.
Most fields contain keywords which will be used for search, while the
description is a running text that provides the most important information
to persons viewing the item. The fields marked with * are obligatory.
Help is provided by small windows that pop up when the mouse is moved over
the field name.
After completing your submission, you can still modify it during the
same session. Afterwards, modifications will be considered as a new
version of an entry. All submissions will be up for approval by the
editor. The editor is *name*.
Searchability and multilinguality
The database must be searchable/browsable in different ways.
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Search is done by placing restrictions on a number of fields. This
search mask will be similar to the data entry mask or a subset of this.
The list of search results can be browsed.
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Free text search is by searching all fields with keywords (easy but not
very reliable).
A list of topic keywords with multilingual
translation is provided.
Presentation of search results
It is agreed that the first view of an item presented to the user contains
just core information plus buttons for accessing extra information.
Core information:
Item name (with hyperlink to URL), medium, description, type,
subject field, topic keywords
Further details:
Main ped. features, level, languages, platform, free of charge,
limitations, illustration, assoc. materials, version, year
Author and publisher
Author name, institution
Reviewer
Reviewer name (with hyperlink to email), affiliation
Comments
Comment title, author, email, text