C A L L F O R P A P E R S Journal of Natural Language Engineering SPECIAL ISSUE ON EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS Guest Editors: Jill Burstein Educational Testing Service Princeton, New Jersey Claudia Leacock Pearson Knowledge Technologies Boulder, Colorado OBJECTIVE OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE Educational applications that make use of natural language processing methods are deployed for both large-scale assessment and classroom instruction. These applications include automated scoring of essays and short-answer responses, and qualitative feedback for essays -- evaluation of grammar, usage, mechanics, style, and high-level discourse analysis. It is critical that we continue to show progress not only with regard to the amount of feedback that an application can provide, but also with regard to the level of sophistication of the feedback. Additionally, there needs to be meaningful links between the feedback related to students' writing quality and the corresponding instruction. This special issue is devoted to advances in capabilities that evaluate and provide feedback related student writing. We are especially interested in submissions including, but not limited to: * Speech-based tools for educational technology * Innovative text analysis for evaluation of student writing with regard to: a) general writing quality, or b) accuracy of content for domain-specific responses * Text analysis methods to handle particular writing genres, such as legal or business writing, or creative aspects of writing * Intelligent tutoring systems that incorporate state-of-the-art NLP methods to evaluate response content, using either text- or speech-based analyses * Dialogue systems in education * understanding student input * generating the tutors' feedback * evaluation * Evaluation of NLP-based tools for education * Use of student response databases (text or speech) for tool building * Content-based scoring While we invite submissions addressing any of the above topics, or related issues, we particularly welcome submissions that describe deployed applications. Further, since most of the deployed work in NLP-based educational applications is text-based, we are especially interested in any work of this type that incorporates speech processing and other input/output modalities. SUBMISSION FORMAT We are expecting full papers to describe original, previously unpublished research, addressing issues related to the use of natural language processing methods for the development of educational technology applications. Papers should be formatted according to the NLE journal instructions, and should not exceed 15 pages. The preferred formatting system is LaTeX, which can be used for direct typesetting, and a style file is available through anonymous ftp from the following address: ftp.cup.cam.ac.uk/pub/texarchive/journals/latex/nle-sty/. In case of difficulty there is a helpline available on e-mail: texline@cup.cam.ac.uk. Send your submission (a PostScript or PDF file), prepared for anonymous review, to both: Jill Burstein, Educational Testing Service, jburstein@ets.org , and Claudia Leacock, Pearson Knowledge Technologies, claudia.leacock@k-a-t.com IMPORTANT DATES Paper submissions: May 1, 2005 Notification of acceptance: August 30, 2005 Final versions due: November 30, 2005 Journal publication: June 2006 Confirmed Program Committee: Chris Bowerman, University of Sunderland, UK Martin Chodorow, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA Paul Deane, Educational Testing Service, USA Barbara Di Eugenio, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Derrick Higgins, Educational Testing Service Felisa Verdejo, UNED, Spain Pamela Jordon, University of Pittsburgh, USA Karen Kukich, National Science Foundation, USA Thomas Landauer, University of Colorado and Pearson Knowledge Technologies, USA Diane Litman, University of Pittsburgh, USA Daniel Marcu, Information Sciences Institute/University of Southern California, USA Ruslan Mitkov, University of Wolverhampton, UK Johanna Moore, University of Edinburgh, UK Thomas Morton, Educational Testing Service, USA Carolyn Penstein Rose, University of Pittsburgh, USA Donia Scott, University of Brighton, UK Susanne Wolff, Princeton University, USA ABOUT THE JOURNAL Natural Language Engineering is an international journal designed to meet the needs of professionals and researchers working in all areas of computerized language processing, whether from the perspective of theoretical or descriptive linguistics, lexicology, computer science or engineering. Its principal aim is to bridge the gap between traditional computational linguistics research and the implementation of practical applications with potential real-world use. As well as publishing research articles on a broad range of topics from text analysis, machine translation and speech generation and synthesis to integrated systems and multi modal interfaces the journal also publishes book reviews. Its aim is to provide the essential link between industry and the academic community. Natural Language Engineering encourages papers reporting research with a clear potential for practical application. Theoretical papers that consider techniques in sufficient detail to provide for practical implementation are also welcomed, as are shorter reports of on-going research, conference reports, comparative discussions of NLE products, and policy-oriented papers examining e.g. funding programs or market opportunities. All contributions are peer reviewed. Edited by John I. Tait University of Sunderland, UK Branimir K. Boguraev IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York, USA Christian Jacquemin CNRS-LIMSI, France