1.Publishable summary

The Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning project (LTfLL) developed a set of innovative loosely coupled tools that intend to improve the understanding and analysis of students’ textual artefacts using language technologies. Progress after 36 months at the end of year 3 has been summarised in the Final Report (D1.4) as follows:

The LTfLL tools and services were built around specific pedagogic problem statements that relate to contemporary approaches in technology-enhanced teaching and learning. In response to these problem statements, solutions were designed and prototypically implemented, that provide semi-automated assistance to users, helping them to address different areas of their work. In this pursuit, language technologies like latent semantic analysis (LSA) and natural language processing (NLP) were extensively explored and implemented. All tools were tested and piloted with stakeholders and end users in a rigorous three cycle validation and feedback process.

The project developed six applications, comprised of some 25 partly interconnected widgets, encompassing the areas of learner positioning, concept coverage, dialogue analysis and summarising assistance, as well as formal and informal resource discovery. Furthermore, the project produced a number of detailed scenarios for language technologies as well as templates and methodologies for verifying and validating conceptual designs and software solutions with stakeholders and end users. Through this method, our tools have been shown to benefit learning and teaching in the following ways:

  • Addressing real educational needs (e.g. qualitative/quantitative learning analytics)
  • Supporting the learning process and specific text-oriented learning activities (e.g. chat, reflection, essay)
  • Easing known learner/tutor struggles in technology-enhanced learning and mass-education
  • Portable to any learning environment that is open to widgets (e.g. Moodle, iGoogle, Elgg, Blackboard)
  • Flexible to pick and mix to suit learner/tutor needs: use only the widgets you need
  • Interoperability of tools allows threading in support of more elaborate pedagogic patterns
  • Enhanced understanding of the usefulness of language technologies in learning analytics
  • Algorithms and pattern recognition for text linguistic analysis of learner artefacts and interactions

Learning is seen in LTfLL as a combination of individual and social processes. Feedback from the LTfLL tools is of advisory nature in order to support tutors (and independent learners) in their respective tasks and to allow targeted intervention. By using the LTfLL applications a tutor can spend less time on repetitive supervising and assessing of students, which leaves more time for personal attendance.

Being a research project, tools are of prototypical proof-of-concept nature to demonstrate that language technologies can bring added value and benefit to teaching and learning. Further research and development after the project has been planned and is expected to happen.

Other tangible outcomes include a common semantic framework to auto-enhance formal ontologies with folksonomy data, and the development of inter-widget data communication. Improved algorithms and a specialist annotation tool are further results of our work. Academic results were published as research papers in a number of journals and at conferences.

Consortium partners

The project Consortium includes 11 partners from seven different countries:

  • Open Universiteit Nederland, The Netherlands (OUNL)
  • Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands (UU)
  • Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany (UTU)
  • Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien,Austria(WUW)
  • Université Pierre-MendèsFrance,France(UPMF)
  • PolitehnicaUniversity of Bucharest - NationalCenter for Information Technology,Romania(PUB-NCIT)
  • Aurus Kennis- en Trainingssystemen BV, The Netherlands(AURUS)
  • The University of Manchester,United Kingdom(UMAN)
  • Institute for Parallel Processing of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,Bulgaria(IPP-BAS)
  • BIT Media E-learning solution GMBH and CO KG,Austria(BIT)
  • The Open University, United Kingdom(OU)

Contact details (information for potential collaborations):

Coordinator:
LTfLL Secretariat,
Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies
Open Universiteit Nederland
P.O. Box 2960
6401 DLHeerlen,
The Netherlands.
e-mail: or / Logo:

Website:
LTfLL public website:

Website and technical issues: