Computational Linguistics Recommendations

General Recommendations

Larger co-ordinated efforts are needed to:

attract larger student numbers;
bundle scarce teaching competencies;
develop innovative pedagogical resources;
promote mobility through international recognition of credits and commonly agreed degree requirements.
Traditional barriers between the humanities and science/engineering must be lowered through the promotion of interdisciplinary programmes of study such as CL.
Links between education and research need to be strengthened.
Lifelong learning needs to take place.
Teaching staff should be increased and freed to participate in co-ordinated activities that enhance the student learning experience as well as the value of their qualifications.

Specific Recommendations

There is a need for new researchers in CL.

The capacity for CL education needs to be increased.

An increase in the number of highly competent teaching staff at institutions offering CL is needed.

CL educators need to maintain a balance between theoretical and practical concerns.

General linguistics and language studies should begin to integrate CL modules into their curricula.

CL and speech processing need to co-operate in building links to industry.

The summer schools and courses organised by ELSNET, FOLLI and others need to continue.

The involvement of learned societies such as the EACL in educational matters should be fostered through international special interest groups.

The CL community should establish international degrees in CL. In such cases certification and accreditation will be important, as it has been for the International Masters in Language and Speech in which ESCA and EACL have been involved.

Internationally funded RTD programmes should continue to support projects for the development of advanced teaching tools for CL.

Future research projects in CL should be explicitly required to make their results available for educational reuse.

At the level of the institution, group work and project-based education should become more prevalent in CL and CAL tools should be made available to their students.

Institutions for higher education should consider open and distance learning schemes and life-long learning in CL.

Reforms in CL education not be limited to the level of higher education. It is necessary to initiate wide preparatory measures at other levels of education. Awareness raising and competence raising measures in secondary education can for instance take the form of job orientation with respect to the language industries and the integration of NLP tools in grammar teaching and foreign language teaching.