Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: E-Learning is more and more becoming a commodity in all areas of education ranging from curricular learning at schools and universities via further education and learning on the job to social and game-based learning in spare time activities.At the same time, research on E-Learning is scattered across different research disciplines, being often a matter of single initiatives and persons.In the light of this growing gap, the authors of this introduction want to showcase Computational Linguistics and Language Technology as possible key enabling technologies for current E-Learning. Current trends in E-LearningE-Learning, or Technology-Enhanced Learning is an interdisciplinary research area which involves research disciplines like Pedagogy, Pedagogical Psychology, Computer Science (particularly research on human-computer interaction (HCI), knowledge management, and software architectures for virtual learning management systems), Artificial Intelligence (especially research on intelligent tutoring systems (ITS)) and Computational Linguistics (in particular computer-assisted language learning, educational natural language processing and text technology for learning technology standards and applications).In the last 15 years, the research area "E-Learning" has undergone major changes.While the first decade, starting in the end of the 20th century, has mainly focused on learning infrastructure and learning content, more recently, the learning process and the learners have been taken more seriously.Today, a learner-centred paradigm dominates E-Learning.Current areas of interest are adaptivity and personalization (individual and ubiquitous learning settings, personal infrastructures supporting life long learning), learning in social communities, and learning & entertainment (game-based learning).Taking up trends in the Web 2.0, attention has been given to aspects like virtual learning communities, web based collaboration, social media content and social learning infrastructures (e.g.edublogs and wikis).This insight also had an influence in research on and development of virtual learning environments: Personal learning environments or mashup personal learning environments are subjects of increasing interest, and are more and more seen as more adequate promoters of life long learning than traditional virtual learning environments.Moreover, applications and methods supporting learning at any time and any place are also seen as important factors to improve life long learning.Catch phrases in this context are "ubiquitous learning", "mobile learning" and "augmented reality".It can be expected that these research and development fields will become more and more important in the next years.Beside these trends, two more important aspects of current technology-enhanced learning have to be mentioned: E-assessment and game-based learning.E-Assessment has always played a major role in E-Learning, but has long been restricted to simple multiple-choice or fill-in-the-gap tasks, because of a lack of more advanced methods to automatically evaluate input from open tasks or essays.In the last years, there has been profound progress in this area, especially through the application of educational natural language processing techniques.Game-based learning or serious games are the flip side of the coin.These areas focus on more informal and entertaining methods of training and self-assessment. E-Learning and Computational LinguisticsComputational linguistics (CL) has a long tradition in research on E-Learning.For a long time, this research has been restricted to computer-assisted language learning (CALL).But in the last decade, attention has been shifted to other research areas concerning a large variety of aspects of E-Learning.In the following, we will give an overview of main areas and aspects.This overview is organized in three parts: 1. CL research on digital learning content and resources, 2. CL research on computer-mediated communication and collaboration, and 3. CL research on E-assessment.
Authors: Maja Bärenfänger, Maik Stührenberg
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Universität des Saarlandes
OpenAlex ID: W4312414330