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<Paper uid="W02-0112">
  <Title>Teaching Computational Linguistics at the University of Tartu: Experience, Perspectives and Challenges</Title>
  <Section position="6" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="evalu">
    <SectionTitle>
5 Problems
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The modules of CL and LT contain a number of common subjects that have also to be taught jointly to the students majoring in CL and LT.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Preceding from earlier experience it may be assumed that the total number of listeners will not be big but they are with varied preparation. While teaching according to the present curriculum there have been groups including CL students, students from different linguistics fields (Roman-German philology or Estonian as a foreign language) as well as students of computer science. The new curricula have &amp;quot;legalised&amp;quot; the different backgrounds of the students. This will be a challenge to the lecturers: how to present the material in a way that is understandable and manageable for the students, at the same time not being too simple for some students. So far we have overcome the problem by giving different assignments to students with different background. E.g. the students of computer science compile a language processing program while the students of linguistics work with language corpora. In the future these problems will be more acute and require a complex solution. For example, how to compose teams of students with different qualification in such a way that by complementing each other they would be able to solve a joint problem.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Another problem is a small number of students attending special courses. One solution to it could be the web-based tuition, i.e. not only the availability of teaching materials over the web but a special distance learning environment integrating lecture materials, individualised/ personally tailored assignments and check of knowledge. UT has successfully implemented the learning environment WebCT that already includes a number of courses (in the framework of the eUniversity project). These do not include any CL courses so far which means that we have to start preparing them by using the already existing web course materials.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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