LINGUIST List 13.1695

Fri Jun 14 2002

Confs: Natural Lang Processing/Computational Ling

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Dragomir Radev, ACL TNLP Workshop - Call for Participation

			CALL FOR PARTICIPATION


			 An ACL 2002 Workshop:

 EFFECTIVE TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR TEACHING NATURAL LANGUAGE
	 PROCESSING AND COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

========================================================================

This message contains three parts:

1. Workshop announcement and program
2. Funding available to attend workshop
3. Funding application

========================================================================

 EFFECTIVE TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR TEACHING NATURAL LANGUAGE
	 PROCESSING AND COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

			(ACL-02 TNLP WORKSHOP)

	 July 7, 2002 (the day before the main conference)

			Philadelphia, PA, USA

	 http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev/TeachingNLP


To sign up, go to http://www.acl02.org
Early registration ends This Friday, June 14.

Co-chairs: 

Dragomir Radev, University of Michigan 
Chris Brew, Ohio State University 



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: 

 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.

 Selecting an appropriate focus for a course, e.g., theory
 vs. applications, symbolic vs. empirical, text-only
 vs. text+speech, etc.

 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.

 Finding the right links to related areas, such as Theoretical
 Linguistics, Information Retrieval, Speech Science, Cognitive
 Science, Artificial Intelligence, or Genetic/Molecular Biology.

 Choosing appropriate assignments to provide the right mix of
 theoretical, programming and data analysis exercises.

 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). 

In addition to two panels to be held during the workshop, the
following papers and posters have been accepted for presentation.



		 Teaching methods and tools
		 ==========================

Teaching NLP/CL through games: the case of parsing
Hans van Halteren
U. of Nijmegen

An interactive spreadsheet for teaching the forward-backward algorithm
Jason Eisner
Johns Hopkins University

A Web-based Instructional Platform for Constraint-Based Grammar
Formalisms and Parsing
Detmar Meurers and Gerald Penn and Frank Richter
Ohio State U. and Toronto and Tuebingen


		Tool frameworks designed for teaching
		=====================================

Using Gate as an environment for teaching NLP
Kalina Bontcheva, Hamish Cunningham, Valentin Tablan, Diana Maynard
and Oana Hamza
U. of Sheffield


NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit
Edward Loper and Steven Bird
U. Penn


			 Curriculum issues
			 =================

Evangelising Language Technology: A practically-focused undergraduate
program
Robert Dale, Diego Molla Aliod, Rolf Schwitter
Macquarie University

A non-programming introduction to computer science via NLP, IR, and AI
Lillian Lee
Cornell U.

Design and evolution of a language technologies curriculum
Robert Frederking, Eric Nyberg, Teruko Mitamura, and Jaime Carbonell
CMU

A niche at the nexus: situating an NLP curriculum interdisciplinarily
Deryle Lonsdale
Brigham Young U.


			 Posters
			 =======

Formal Language Theory for Natural Language Processing
Shuly Wintner
U. of Haifa

Lexicalized grammar 101
Matthew Stone
Rutgers U

Teaching Computational Linguistics at the University of Tartu: ...
Mare Koit and Tiit Roosmaa
University of Tartu



PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Dragomir Radev (co-chair), University of Michigan
Chris Brew (co-chair), Ohio State University
Robert Dale, Macquarie University
Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto
Eduard Hovy, USC/ISI
Jason Eisner, Johns Hopkins University
Andy Kehler, University of California, San Diego
Lillian Lee, Cornell University
Gina Levow, University of Chicago
Diane Litman, University of Pittsburgh
Chris Manning, Stanford University
James Martin, University of Colorado
Detmar Meurers, Ohio State University
Massimo Poesio, University of Essex
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen
Philip Resnik, University of Maryland
Ellen Riloff, University of Utah
Matt Stone, Rutgers University
Rich Thomason, University of Michigan
Hans Uszkoreit, University of the Saarland and DFKI
Bonnie Webber, University of Edinburgh
Dekai Wu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

========================================================================

			FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES


With help from the National Science Foundation, a number of travel
stipends will be available to qualified applicants.

Participants will be selected to represent (a) a mix of advanced
graduate students, young faculty, and faculty from underrepresented
areas (states, countries, and colleges where NLP/CL has not
traditionally been a major part of the curriculum), (b) a mix of
participants from different types of institutions (large universities
and small colleges), (c) a mix of regions, (d) a mix of departments
(Computer Science, Information Science, Linguistics, Computational
Linguistics, etc.), and (e) a mix of career stages (senior graduate
students, junior faculty, and others). Authors of accepted papers will
be given preference.

The travel stipends can be used for any of the following items: travel
to/from Philadelphia (some restrictions apply), housing at ACL,
conference and workshop registration, food while at the conference. It
is unlikely that the awards will cover all expenses for a given
participant. The number and amount of the travel awards will depend on
the actual amount of funding provided by the NSF. All participants are
fully responsible to register and pay all of their
expenses. Reimbursements (up to the award amount) will be done after
the end of the conference.

To apply for funding, please complete the form and send it via email
to Dragomir Radev (radevumich.edu) and Chris Brew
(cbrewling.ohio-state.edu) by Friday, June 21. A committee composed
of PC members will be in charge of selecting the awardees.

========================================================================

		 APPLICATION FORM FOR FUNDING
			 

Name:

Email:

Institution:

Department:

Position (or year in school):

Do you teach or plan to teach any NLP/CL courses:
 - attach a brief description of each course, if applicable

Which city/country will you be coming from:

Amount of funding needed:
 - please itemize (travel, registration, hotel, food, etc.)

Amount secured by other sources:
 - please itemize (travel, registration, hotel, food, etc.)

Amount remaining to be covered:

Are you:

(a) presenting a paper at the TNLP workshop (yes/no)
(b) presenting a paper at the main conference, student session, or
another part of ACL-02 (yes/no)
 - specify which paper 
(c) co-author of a paper (yes/no)
 - specify which paper 
(d) other 
 - specify
========================================================================