CALL FOR PAPERS

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION
        FOR eLEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
            Borovets, Bulgaria
            September 26, 2007

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              Workshop site:  http://www.lt4el.eu/nlp_knowrep200709.html

            RANLP'2007 site:  http://lml.bas.bg/ranlp2007/

AIMS

Several initiatives have been launched in the area of Computational Linguistics,
Language Resources and Knowledge Representation both at the national and international level aiming at the development of resources and
tools. Unfortunately, there are few initiatives that integrate these results
within eLearning. The situation is slightly better with respect to the results
achieved within Knowledge Representation since ontologies are being
developed which describe not only the content of the learning material but
crucially also its context and the structure. Furthermore, knowledge representation techniques and natural language processing play an important
role in improving the adaptivity of learning environments even though they
are not fully exploited yet.

On the other hand, eLearning environments constitute valuable scenarios
to demonstrate the maturity of computational linguistic methods as well
as of natural language technologies and tools. This kind of task-based evaluation
of resources, methods and tools is a crucial issue for the further
development of language and information technology.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss:
? the use of language and knowledge resources and tools in eLearning;
? requirements on natural language resources, standards, and applications
originating in eLearning activities and environments;
? the expected added value of natural language resources and technology
to learning environments and the learning process;
? strategies and methods for the task based evaluation of Natural Language
Processing applications.

The workshop will bring together computational linguists, language resources
developers, knowledge engineers, researchers involved in technology-enhanced
learning as well as developers of eLearning material, ePublishers and eLearning
practitioners. It will provide a forum for interaction among members of
di
erent research communities, and a means for attendees to increase their
knowledge and understanding of the potential of computational resources in
eLearning.

TOPICS

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
*  ontology modelling in the eLearning domain;
* Natural Language Processing techniques for supplying metadata for
learning objects on a (semi)-automatic basis, e.g. for the automatic
extraction of key terms and their definitions;
* techniques for summarization of discussion threads and support of
discourse coherence in eLearning;
* improvements on (semantic, cross-lingual) search methods to in learning
environments;
* techniques of matching the semantic representation of learning objects
with the user?s knowledge in order to support personalized and adaptive
learning;
* adaptive information filtering and retrieval (content-based filtering and
retrieval, collaborative filtering)
* intelligent tutoring (curriculum sequencing, intelligent solution analysis,
problem solving support)
* intelligent collaborative learning (adaptive group formation and peer
help, adaptive collaboration)

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submissions by young researchers are especially welcomed.

* Format. Authors are invited to submit full papers on original, unpublished work in the topic area of this workshop. Papers should be submitted as a PDF file, formatted according to the RANLP 2007 stylefiles and not exceeding 8 pages. The RANLP 2007 stylefiles are available at:

http://lml.bas.bg/ranlp2007/submissions.htm

* Demos. Submission of demos are also welcome. Papers submitted as demo should not exceed 4 pages and should describe extensively the system to be presented.

* Submission procedure. Submission of papers will be handled using
the START system, through the RANLP Conference. Specific submission guidelines will be posted on the workshop site shortly.

* Reviewing. Each submission will be reviewed at least by two members
of the Program Committee.

* Accepted papers policy. Accepted papers will be published in the
workshop proceedings. By submitting a paper at the workshop the
authors agree that, in case the paper is accepted for publication, at
least one of the authors will attend the workshop; all workshop
participants are expected to pay the RANLP-2007 workshop registration
fee.


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: June 15, 2007
Paper acceptance notification:  July 25, 2007
Camera-ready papers due:  August 31, 2007
Workshop date:  September 26, 2007


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Antonio Branco (University of Lissabon, Portugal)
Paul Buitelaar (DFKI, Germany
Dan Cristea (University of Iasi, Rumänien)
Diane Evans (Open University, UK)
Walther v. Hahn (University of Hamburg)
Erhard Hinrichs (University of Tübingen, Germany)
Susanne Jekat (Zürich Winterthur Hochschule, Switzerland)
Alex Killing (ETHZ, Switzerland)
Steven Krauwer (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Vladislav Kubon (Charles University Prag, Czech Republic)
Lothar Lemnitzer (University of Tübingen, Germany)
Paola Monachesi University of Utrecht, The Netherlands ()
Petya Osenova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria)
Adam Prezpiorkowski (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Anne de Roeck (Open University,UK)
Marco Ronchetti (University of Trento, Italy)
Mike Rösner (University of Malta, Malta)
Cristina Vertan (University of Hamburg, Germany)


KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Keynote speakers will be announced shortly before the workshop.


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Paola Monachesi
University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Lothar Lemnitzer
University of Tübingen, Germany

Cristina Vertan
University of Hamburg, Germany