SOCRATES THEMATIC NETWORK PROJECTS

SPEECH COMMUNICATION SCIENCES &
ADVANCED COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES

Co-operation in the framework of a 4th dissemination year
(Nov 1, 1999 - Nov 1, 2000)

Working group 4: Recommendations and policy documents

Coordinator: Wim van Dommelen

Working group members:

funding	name	site	e-mail	previous WG
SCS	Wim van Dommelen	Trondheim - Norway	dommelen@proffen.hf.ntnu.no	PHON
SCS	Florien J. van Beinum	Amsterdam - The Netherlands	f.van.beinum@hum.uva.nl	PHON
SCS	Wolfgang Hess	Bonn - Germany	wgh@ikp.uni-bonn.de	PHON/SLE
SCS	Mircea Giurgiu	Cluj - Romania	Mircea.Giurgiu@com.utcluj.ro	SLE
SCS	Margareth Leahy (not coming to Praha)	Dublin - Ireland	mleahy@mail.tcd.ie	SLT
SCS	Anu Klippi	Helsinki - Finland	klippi@pop.helsinki.fi	SLT
ACO	Nicoletta Calzolari	Pisa - Italy	glottolo@ilc.pi.cnr.it	CL	policy docs
ACO	Andy Way	Dublin - Ireland	away@compapp.dcu.ie	CL	rec. on curr.
ACO	Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova	Praha - Czech Rep	korbay@kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz	CL
ACO	Koenraad de Smedt	Bergen - Norway	desmedt@uib.no	CL	student
ACO	Paul Mc Kevitt	Belfast - Northern Ireland	P.McKevitt@Queens-Belfast.ac.uk	CL
ACO	Joseph Bell	Bergen - Norway	joseph.bell@msk.uib.no	NEL	policy docs

Concerns:

Policy documents directed towards national and EU bodies
Recommendations on curricula
Student awareness plan
Publications on training
Workshops on training

Policy documents directed towards national and EU bodies

To be developed: General strategic policy documents directed towards national bodies (Ministries of Education, national ERASMUS committees etc.), EU bodies (SOCRATES etc.), and institutional leaders (rectors, deans, heads of department). Recommendations have to some extent been written for CL: at the end of each major chapter in ACO*HUM book, conclusions and recommendations are explicitly given. Some recommendations are also present in the 3rd volume (red) of the SCS series. All these recommendations should be merged and generalized to cover the whole field of NL & Speech. Also, they should be translated to suggestions for political priorities with respect to educational and research policy. These strategic documents should also include recommendations for national bodies to intiate students awareness plans (see below). The policy documents should be printed and distributed to the target bodies and should also be published on the web. The texts should be written carefully and presented attractively. Also an overview should be produced of European AND national support programmes for international cooperation in education.

Recommendations on curricula

These have been developed within the Socrates TNPs but in various representations. Web presentations should be thought of and it would be nice if some common presentation type could be found. The latter is not essential however. For Phonetics and SLE, the curriculum recommendations include advice on books, software, etc. broadly used in Europe.

Available:

Phonetics: curriculum recommendations: Book 3, chapter 2 (perhaps merge with analyses presented in Book 1, chapter 2); survey of textbooks and equipment: Book 2, chapter 2.3 (would need regular updates) [implement as links to Resources section]
Spoken Language engineering: curriculum recommendations per module (including textbook and other suggestions): Book 2, chapter 3.3 [the latter suggestions could be implemented as links to a Resources section] (perhaps merge with analyses presented in Book 1, chapter 3)
Speech and Language Therapy: recommendations: Book 3, chapter 4
CL: ACO*HUM book electronically available at http://www.hd.uib.no/AcoHum/book/ (chapter 3) includes: general recommendations (section 5) curriculum level recommendations (section 3)
NEL: ACO*HUM book http://www.hd.uib.no/AcoHum/book/ (chapter 3) includes suggestions for curricula and general recommendations

Student awareness plan

Coordinated by KOENRAAD DE SMEDT

Problem

The European language industries, as well as research projects in language and speech, are in acute need of more and higher qualified personnel. It seems that not enough students and prospective students are aware of the opportunities for studying human language technology. They neither know:

what language and speech technology means;
what current and potential applications are;
what the scientific challenges in the field are;
what kinds of job opportunities there are in the field;
what kind of competence is required for jobs in the field;
which institutions in Europe offer this competence;
what studying the field in practic entails.

Human language technology is an interdisciplinary and relatively new field which does not have a established place among traditional academic disciplines. It is not taught at secondary level at all, such that it remains unknown to many students.

Goal

Students and prospective students should be provided with good and easily graspable information to increase their awareness and their motivation for studying language and speech technology subjects.

The goal is therefore to formulate concrete recommendations for national educational authorities to spread awareness by providing teachers, students, and prospective students with the information outlined above.

The recommendation will have the form of a concrete plan consisting minimally of:

orientation for the implementer: current needs and intended outcomes
inventory of targeted audiences, information needs and suitable media (video, interactive CD-ROM, Web, broadcast, teacher conferences)
scenarios
cooperation partners for implementation

National authorities are expected to implement the plan by adapting it to various national or regional contexts (language, educational system, etc.) and carry out actions which directly target the intended audiences.