EFFECTIVE TOOLS AND METHODOLOGIES FOR TEACHING NLP AND CL

			 An ACL 2005 Workshop

	  June 25, 2005 (the day before the main conference)
			    Ann Arbor, MI
	     http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev/TeachingNLP
		      http://www.teachingnlp.org 

			      Co-chairs:

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


INTRODUCTION



Natural Language Processing (and Computational Linguistics) courses
have attracted great interest in the last few years. More and
more universities are offering both introductory and advanced
classes. Since the last workshop (held in Philadelphia at ACL 2002)
the field has diversified even more than was evident at that time, 
and the pedagogical demands of the field show no sign of decreasing.
Some of the main challenges in teaching NLP
are:

1. 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 science, or
   programming.

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

3. 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.

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

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

6. 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
experienced teachers (e.g. college faculty)
future teachers (e.g. current graduate students).


CALL FOR PAPERS AND COURSE MATERIALS

We request short papers (4-8 pages) on the following
topics: 

1. Course design
2. Innovative approaches to lectures and in-class assignments
3. Instructive and effective take-home assignments and projects
4. Educational software and teaching aids to be used in class and outside.
5. Curriculum issues (e.g., developing an effective multi-course CL
   program; fitting NLP into an undergraduate program, etc) 
6. Teaching NLP in different departments: Computer Science,Linguistics, 
   Information Science, etc.
7. Evaluation (goal setting;assessment of outcomes, etc.)

In addition to these papers, we request submissions of teaching
materials for review, feedback  and discussion. The program committee 
will provide authors with review-style feedback on these materials and
authors will have the opportunity to publish final versions on the
conference website. There will be a poster session with five minute
presentations for authors of teaching materials.


The workshop will feature a panel discussion on future directions for
the teaching and learning of NLP. As in the previous workshop, this may
involve brainstorming and small group work.

Submissions of papers should not exceed 8 pages in length. Format requirements
will be the same as for full papers of ACL 2005, except that
submission will not be blind. Visit http://www.aclweb.org/acl2005/ to
get style files. Papers should be sent electronically to
cbrew@ling.osu.edu by the deadline shown below. 

Submissions of teaching materials should be of manageable size, such that
a reviewer would be able to provide feedback at a level of care and 
detail comparable to that needed for a 4-8 page paper. If you want to
send something longer, indicate clearly a manageable subsection that 
you are proud of and would appreciate feedback on.

Formats for teaching material submissions are up to you. We have
access to the usual range of machines, and will do our best to find
reviewers but there is a limit to how much time we will spend on stuff
with unusual formats. PDF is almost certainly OK. Powepoint slides
often work too, but be careful about fonts and (ideally) check
Powerpoint submissions created on one sort of machine (a Mac or a PC)
by running them on the other (a PC or a Mac). Software may be
submitted, but should have a strong educational flavour. Papers on
research software and implementation techniques should instead go to
the ACL 2005 Workshop on Software.


We will assemble printed proceedings, however the ultimate goal of
this workshop is to strengthen the groundwork for further professional
collaboration in teaching NLP/CL.


IMPORTANT DATES

Submissions Due: April 26, 2005
Acceptance Notification to Authors: May 13, 2005
Camera-Ready Papers Due: May 19, 2005
Workshop: June 25, 2005



REGISTRATION

Registration fees are $50 for regular participants. We are seeking
funding for registration fee waivers and travel support to enable
attendance by people from economically disadvantaged countries.

Candidates for registration fee waivers should indicate their interest
to the program co-chairs by May 16th. Authors of accepted submissions will
have priority, then authors of rejected submisions, then all others.


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Chris Brew (co-chair), Ohio State U., cbrew@ling.ohio-state.edu
Dragomir Radev (co-chair), U. Michigan, radev@umich.edu

Steven Bird, U. Melbourne
Ted Briscoe, U. Cambridge.
Walter Daelemans, U. Antwerp
Robert Dale, Macquarie U.
Jason Eisner, Johns Hopkins U.
Tomaz Erjavec, Josef Stefan Institute
Kathy McKeown, Columbia U.
Elizabeth R. Liddy, Syracuse U.
Chris Manning, Stanford U.
Jim Martin, U. Colorado
Chris Mellish, U. Aberdeen
Ellen Riloff, U. Utah
Anoop Sarkar, Simon Fraser U.
Harold Somers,  U. Manchester
Richard Sproat, U. Illinois
Matthew Stone, Rutgers U.
Josef van Genabith, Dublin City U.
Richard Wicentowski, Swarthmore College