Teaching and Training in Human Language Technology

Frank Van Eynde

University of Leuven

Part I - Flanders

• Walter Daelemans (Antwerp)

• Véronique Hoste (Ghent)

• Jean-Pierre Martens (Ghent)

• Frank Van Eynde (Leuven)

• Hugo Van hamme (Leuven)

• Astrid van Wieringen (Leuven)

• Werner Verhelst (Brussels)

Overview of part I

1. structure of higher education programs2. the four associations 3. Antwerp4. Brussels 5. Ghent6. Leuven7. inter-university programs8. conclusions

1. Structure

• Bachelor (180 study points)

- professional bachelors

- academic bachelors

• Master (min. 60 study points)

- initial masters

- advanced masters

2. The four associations

• Decision of Flemish government to organize higher education in four associations

• Each association includes at least one university and one or more institutes for higher education

• Relevant for HLT are especially the universities and the institutes for translators and interpreters

3. Antwerp

• University of Antwerp– 7 Faculties distributed over three campuses– app. 10,000 students– 23 Bachelor programs– 86 Master and 40 Advanced Master programs

• Institutes for higher education– Karel De Grote, Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen,

Plantijn Hogeschool, Nautical Sciences School– Total of app. 20,000 students

Faculty of Arts

• BA Language and Literature (180 SP)– Two specialization choices from French, Italian,

Spanish, English, Dutch, Theatre-Film-Literature, (History, Philosophy)

– Brief introduction to Computational Linguistics (for all students): 15 hours

• MA Linguistics (60 SP)– Specialization Computational Psycholinguistics

• Corpus Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Computational Psycholinguistics, Computational Models of Language Understanding

• 3 to 5 students per year• will probably become a 120 SP program

Karel de Grote

• School for Translation and Interpretation– Starting up CL research in cooperation with

universities• Subtitling, readability checking

– Will become a department within the University of Antwerp

– Limited CL-related teaching • translation tools

4. Brussels

• Vrije Universiteit Brussel– 8 Faculties– 9.200 students– 28 Bachelor programs– 60 Master programs

• Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel– 4.200 students

Faculty of Arts

• Bachelor of Linguistics and Literature (180 SP)• choice of two languages out of Dutch, French,

English, Spanish, German and Italian– Working knowledge of all; in depth for two

• Master of Linguistics and Literature (60 SP)– Option profiles (either 12 or 18 SP versions)

• 1 or 2 languages • literature, linguistics, psychology of language or language

pathology • Latin

Faculty of Engineering

• Master in Engineering Science: electronics and information technology (120 SP)– Profile Multimedia (24 SP)

• Digital Speech and Audio Processing (6 SP)

Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel

• Language and Media (Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish)– Ba: Applied Linguistics (180 SP)– Ma 1: Interpreters (Tolken) – Ma 2: Translators (Vertalen)

5. Ghent

• Ghent University– 11 faculties– app. 30000 students

• Members of Association– Hogeschool Gent – Artevelde-hogeschool – Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen– app. 25000 students

Ghent University

• Master in Electrical Engineering– elective course on speech processing (4 SP)

5 students / year

• Master in Computer Science– course on speech processing (4 SP)

20 students / year

• Bachelor in Speech Therapy– course on alternative communication through speech

& language technology (6 SP)

40 students / year

Hogeschool Gent

• Bachelor of translation studies

Ba3: Introduction to Language Technology (200 stud.)

• Master of translation studies (10 stud.)

Computatonial Linguistics

• Postgraduate Dutch and Translation (30 stud.)– Introduction to Language Technology– Computer-aided Translation

• Doctoral school (10 to 15 stud.)– Introduction to Language Technology

6. Leuven

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

- 14 faculties

- app. 34.000 students• 13 associated institutes

- distributed over 23 towns

- app. 51.000 students

- Applied linguistics: Lessius (Antwerp) and

HUB (Brussels) app. 1.100 students

Faculty of Arts - Bachelor

• Bachelor in language and literature (180 SP) • choice of two languages out of Dutch, English,

German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin and ancient Greek

• BA3 contains a module of eight study points in which students specialise in either literature or linguistics or classical culture

• the linguistics module contains a.o. computational linguistics (4 SP) and corpus linguistics (4 SP)

• the bachelor paper (9 SP)

Faculty of Arts - Master

• Master in linguistics (60 SP)

• Common core (18-24 SP)

• Three options (12-18 SP)

-Computational and variational linguistics

-Diachronic and comparative linguistics

-Linguistics and language teaching

• Master thesis (18 SP)

Faculty of Engineering• Master in Electrical Engineering: ICT (120 SP)

– Dutch programme: 3 options• integrated electronics

– Digital signal processing: advanced topics (6 SP)– Masters thesis (24 SP)

• Telecommunications– Digital signal processing: advanced topics (6 SP)– Masters thesis (24 SP)

• Multimedia– Speech and audio processing (6 SP)– Digital signal processing: advanced topics (6 SP)– Design assignment multimedia (6 SP) – Masters thesis (24 SP)

– English programme:• Digital signal processing: advanced topics (6 SP)• Design assignment multimedia (6 SP) • Masters thesis (24 SP)

Faculty of Medicine

• Bachelor in Speech therapy and Audiology Sciences (180 SP)

• Master in Speech therapy and Audiology Sciences (60 SP)

• The program focusses on speech and hearing

Interfaculty program - I

• Advanced Master in Artificial Intelligence (60 SP)• Faculties of Science, Engineering, Arts,

Philosophy, Psychology and Medicine• Common core• Three options

-Engineering & Computer Science

-Cognitive Science

-Speech & Language Technology

Interfaculty program - II

Speech and Language Technology• Linguistic Theories & Artificial Intelligence• Phonetics & Speech Synthesis• Speech Recognition• Natural Language Processing• Language Engineering Applications• Text-based Information Retrieval• Internship in an SLT company or research

institute (12 weeks, 20 SP)

Interfaculty program - III

• since 2001 58 students have completed the Speech & Language Technology program (an average of 7 to 8 per year)

The European Master in Language and Speech

• Network of fourteen European universities which offer a program in SLT that meets commonly defined requirements about content and format of the program

• Edinburgh, Sheffield, Saarbrücken, Bonn, Stuttgart, Erlangen, Barcelona, Leuven, Utrecht, Brno, Aalborg, Lausanne, Athens and Patras

• Annual Master School (one week in July)• certified by ISCA and EACL

Lessius

7. Interuniversity program - I

• Master of Advanced Studies in Linguistics (60 SP)– Leuven, Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent– 2 students per year

• Background courses– CL-related:

• Computational Tools for Linguistics (Antwerp)• Corpus Linguistics (Leuven)

Interuniversity program - II

• Specialization options– Comparative Linguistics (Ghent)– Interdisciplinary Linguistics (Antwerp)

• Computational Linguistics– Cognitive Artificial Intelligence, Automatic Text Understanding,

Linguistic Theories and AI, Intensive course / apprenticeship, thesis

– Multilingual foreign language learning (Brussels)– Cognitive and Functional Linguistics (Leuven)

• Will be phased out as soon as the two-year MA in Linguistics is accepted

8. Conclusions - I

• language technology is mainly taught at Faculties of Arts (esp. Antwerp and Leuven), at institutes for translating and in the interuniversitary Master in linguistics

• speech technology is mainly taught at the Faculties of Engineering in Leuven, Ghent and Brussels

• combining them is possible in the advanced Master in AI program (Leuven)

Conclusions - II

• the number of students who follow courses in language and speech technology is too low to justify the creation of special Master programs, but high enough to survive as an option within broader existing programs

• the number of qualified staff is sufficient to cover a wide range of HLT topics, both at introductory and advanced levels

Part II – the Netherlands

• John Nerbonne (Groningen)

• Arjan van Hessen (Twente)

• Antal van den Bosch (Tilburg)

• Helmer Strik (Nijmegen)

• Maarten de Rijke (Amsterdam)

• Michael Moortgat (Utrecht)

• Elisabeth d’Hallewijn (NTU)

Overview of part II

1. University of Amsterdam

2. University of Groningen

3. Radboud University Nijmegen

4. University of Utrecht

5. University of Tilburg

6. University of Twente

1. University of Amsterdam

• Multiple programs with HLT components,– embedded in the Faculty of Science or

Humanities– level: BA and MA

• Programs– Science: BA computer science, artificial

intelligence, information science have up to 30 EC worth of HLT; MA computer science, artificial intelligence, information science, logic 1 or 2 years, with up to 60 EC on HLT

University of Amsterdam

• Programs (cont’d)– …– Humanities: BA in taalwetenschap with

selected modules in HLT, philosophy with some HLT ingredients; similarly for MA in general linguistics (one or two years) and philosophy (philosophy of language)

2. Groningen University

• Embedded in Faculty of Arts, collaboration with AI and Computing Science (Fac. of Mathematics & Natural Sciences)

• level: BA and MA Information Science; MA Erasmus Mundus Language and Communication Technology (LCT) (with Saarbrucken, Malta, Prague, Metz en Bolzano)

• Courses and credits* BA: NLP (20), programming incl. projects (30-40), statistics (10), logic (10), DB

(10), IR (10), Web incl. XML (15), information systems (10)* MA: NLP (10), Machine Learning (10), Sem. Web (10), Computer-Mediated

Communication (10), Thesis (20), optional internship instead of 1 course (10)* Erasmus Mundus LCT: see MA courses plus Seminar in Statistical Technology

(10), small research project (10 a 20), handwriting recognition (10), discourse & pragmatics (10)

• Number of students: BA Information Science: 180/HLT: 50 - MA Information Science: 60/HLT: 15 - MA LCT: 120/Groningen: 10

• Staff: 4,5 fte, occasionally postdocs and temporary lecturers

3. Radboud University (Nijmegen)

• Embedded in Faculty of Arts• BA Linguistics: some HLT courses (all 5 ECTS)• Minor Language & Speech Technology (L&ST)

20 ECTS, i.e. 4 x 5 ECTS courses• Master Language & Speech Technology (L&ST)

60 ECTS, 5 & 10 ECTS courses• 2 year research master Language and

Communication (L&C) together with Tilburg

120 ECTS

4. University of Utrecht

Cognitive Artificial Intelligence• Participating faculties: Faculty of Humanities (Arts/Philosophy), Computer Science,

Social Sciences (Psyconomy)• Level: BA, MA (2 year)• Courses (all 7.5 ECTS credits):* BA: Linguistics for Cognitive Artificial Intelligence, Logic Programming, Natural

Language Processing; Computational Syntax; Computational Semantics; Semantic Variation

* MA: Foundations Language/Speech Technology; Semantic Web; Linguistic Resources; Language and Learning ; Logical Methods in NLP; Conceptual Semantics

• number of students: BA: 60, MA: 15.• Staff: 6

LinguisticsCourses: see above• Introduction in HLT is compulsory for BA Linguistics• The 1 year HLT Masters program will be suspended due to a lack of interested

humanities students 

5. University of Tilburg

• HLT is embedded in the program Communication and Information Sciences, Faculty of the Humanities

• BA: some HLT-courses; • MA: HLT-oriented Master-track "Human Aspects of Information Technology" (60 SP), in English• MA: Research Master Language & Communication in collaboration with Nijmegen (120 SP)• target group of MA: graduated BA students CIW, linguistics, information sciences, computer

science, information management, knowledge technology; premaster HAIT aims at graduated college students computer science.

• Courses: • Focus on language technology and information retrieval. core courses: Natural Language

Processing; Information Search, Retrieval, and Recommendation; Dialogue and Interface; Text Mining; Knowledge Representation and Knowledge Management.

• 1 year Premaster HAIT 2009: also "Games and AI", "Cognitive Modeling". • Research Master: Language and Speech Technology (Advanced), Pragmatics.    • Number of students: Total CIW BA: 150/, CIW MA: 150. MA track HAIT: 15• Staff: in 2009: 7.

6. University of Twente

• HLT at the Human Media Interaction-group (HMI) is part of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

• level: BA/MA• target group: students computer science• Courses & credits: UT is a technical (oriented) university with a clear focus

on applicability. The focus is on spoken and written man-machine dialogues and unlocking of written and spoken information (= archives).

• Number of students: HLT-courses: 30-60 students; graduations at HMI: ca 25/year

• Staff: 8 (mainly part-time at the HMI-group)

• In addition training for companies, organizations and institutions, f.e. master classes for call center managers, data and communications specialists, police and emergency services etc.