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<Paper uid="W99-0808">
  <Title>An Open Distance Learning Web-Course for NLP in IR</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Approach and aims
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The approach for developing our project has been to capture the experience of designing materials from the distance teaching tradition, while embracing two principles of recent learning theories in the support of both education and training: (i) learning by doing, and (ii) situated learning. The first addresses how to acquire knowledge \[6\] and the latter highlights the ability to deploy knowledge in real world context \[7\]. Some of the assumptions we consider follows: A first essential component of our approach is to provide structured access to a set of tools and learning resources, both internal and external to the site.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In order to deploy the strategy of learning-bydoing, students are required to perform tasks for each main issue. These tasks are designed to encourage lots of practical work situating the learning experience as close to the real world as possible.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> A second component is to help the learner to be introduced in a professional community. In this respect we would pay special attention to establish for all actors (researchers, teachers, professionals and students) concrete ways to collaborate fruitfully in the evolution and updating of the product. This is a quite important aspect in an emerging field where changes come quite rapidly.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> A third component is to enable the learner or trainee to became engaged in a learning community, breaking the feeling of being isolated. Social support and participation improve learners' motivation: facilities for shared virtual spaces and personal communication would be included.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> A fourth component relates to our strong endorsement of the role of collaboration. A culture of collaboration needs to be developed. To explore the potential of group learning we would provide means for developing collaborative activities using asynchronous technology. This would be applicable in contexts where stable small groups of learners could be organized.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Based on the above argumentation the project aims are listed below: * To develop a computer-based course * addressing the topic of applying Natural Language resources and techniques to Information Retrieval or, to be more accurate, Text Retrieval, dealing with multilinguality issues.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> * providing or assembling Internet on-line resources that permit a practical experimentation of the issues considered in the course. Such facilities can be in-site software, including: Stemmers,  * providing an interface to facilitate flexible access to the content matter and the rest of the tools and resources * To involve colleagues in contributing to current and further development of the prototype The remaining sections of the paper describe how the background ideas have been articulated and embedded in the design of the prototype, further testing with users, as well as the internal evaluation and dissemination plan.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 Key features of the IR-NLP
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> web site.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Figure 1 shows the Web Site Homepage. The layout is homogeneous through the site: on the left appears the set of available options, on the right the contents for the selected function. There are two different menus: one for the Homepage, the other for the Contents of the course.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The Homepage menu (see figure 1) offers General Information and Communication Services, and provide access to the contents of the course. General Information is structured in five sections: Using this site, Introduction, Syllabus outline, Requirements and Study Guide. As an example, Introduction gives answers to the following questions: (i) What is this course about? (ii) What will you not find here? (iii) In which ways can the site be exploited for learning purposes? Communication services integrate e-mail facilities with a directory of contacts. In addition, News will be provided here. It also holds room for a Frequently-Asked-Questions list where answers to common problems related to the course will be build and enriched with the contribution of users.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The Contents button provides access to the main page of the course. The Contents menu (see  This course is being developed bythe * UNED Natural Lanouaoe Processinu Grouo under the auspices of the AGO'HUM European ne~ork. and p~'tJally funded by E L.~ ~..T.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The in-site eof~a,,are used in the course has been developed within the ~ and EuroWordNet projects, The  examples and interactive exercises. Information is now mainly hyper-textual with links to a reading list of: references and the glossary. A self-test, that. ican be filled interactively and submitted for evaluation to obtain feedback, is also included for each chapter. Each exercise has a didactic description in terms of the following featu:res:  * Estimated workload: Gives an estimation of the time needed to solve the exercise.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> * Difficulty level: three levels are considered, easy, medium and difficult.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> * Learning Objectives: a description of the main purpose of the exercise, either in terms of knowledge or skills.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> * Character: either Recommended or Optional.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> * Media needed: Paper&amp;pencil, Software (provided by our site), or Links to external sources.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> * Solution: One of these three possibilities: (i) The solution is directly available (ii) A method to check the solution is provided (iii) Questions to  think about the results are provided.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Figure 2 shows one of the exercises for the Information Retrieval chapter.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> Study Guide - offers didactic support to carry out a distance self study of the Contents. For each chapter, the following items are included: (i) A list of the main concepts/principles or techniques for the chapter. (ii) Learning Goals, a description of the concepts/ abilities the student/trainee should acquire by the end of her study. (iii) Schedule, an order of study and activities recommended for distance selflearners. The study guide provides a guided-tour through contents. It is the path recommended for the self-learner wishing to carry out the full course.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> The rest of the buttons provide direct access to the collection of on-line References, Links to external sites, Glossary, Examples, Exercises, Self-tests and Software. In this way the site can be exploited also as a complementary resource for teachers, trainees, students or professionals to enrich in a particular way their own learning framework.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> Estimated workload: 1 h.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> Difficulty level: Easy.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="15"> Learning objectives: Get familiarized with IR processes and some of the WWW retrieval engines that will be used in subsequent exercises. Character: Recommended.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="16"> Media: Link to external source.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="17"> Solution: Questions to think about your results are provided. Try the following queries on at least four search engines here, and answer the questions. Search for 'Darbuka'.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="18">  For instance, the Links button leads to a page where the external links appearing in our site are listed under the following headings:  References This is the main source of documentation to follow the course. There are three kinds of ~eferences: material from tutorials or reference books on IR and NLP, relevant papers on each of the topics covered, and reviews of the state-of-the-art and prospects for the future. We ,try to select only freely available on-line material, to eliminate the significant burden imposed on a distance self-learner if he has to obtain references in documentation centers.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="19"> The Software button leads to a page where a variety of tools related to the course are described. In some cases they are available for interactive uge, in others they can be downloaded and installed in your own equipment. Tools are of three kinds: public domain, adapted for the course (for example the Porter algorithm) or specially licensed for the course. For the latter we have designed and build interactive web interfaces. Figure 3 shows an exercise inv.olving the use of external (links in part l, 2 and 6) and internal resources (part 3). Clicking on &amp;quot;this interface&amp;quot;, a window appears where one can write a text and submit it for &amp;quot;word by Word translation&amp;quot;. The results of the morphological analysis and the tagger are shown on the left window, and the dictionary translation for lagged words appear on the right window.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="20"> The Projects button is for registered groups of students, following a regular course (it means under the full responsibility and organization of a tutor). It provides an environment where you can perform co!!aboratively learning activities.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Current status and Future
Action
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The IRL &amp; NLP Course site is currently public accessible on the WEB, still on a working status (actually we have invested much more than the funding). Now our strategy is to carry out a personalized call to improve and enrich collaboratively the site. We foresee a first phase targeting selected experts and performing a testbed with our Ph.D. university students. Then we will carry out a dissemination plan through specialized networks such as ACO*HUM and professional events.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> We will ask experts for their comments on the content and their willingness to establish different degrees of collaboration. From weak ones, such as notifying changes in their URLs, to more involved ones. For instance, contributing with practical material or tools or being included in the directory to answer potential user questions in order to create incrementally structured FAQs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> With students we will test three issues: usability factors, content evaluation as well as experimental data to contrast the current workload estimations of the study guide.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Our intention, for dissemination purposes, is to establish a cooperative framework where researchers on the field could update information or contribute with their points of view. In this way, this web site would constitute a comprehensive and updated reference for any course on the topic.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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