Alane

In recent years, Edia has invested a lot in language technology. We have translated a number of methods and techniques from scientific research into a software toolkit for adaptive, personalised, language acquisition: the Adaptive LANguage Engine (ALANE) toolkit. From this toolkit we developed a number of concrete eLearning applications for language education. Using this toolkit, user centered lesson materials are (semi) automatically generated that create a more effective and efficient learning situation.

Large volumes of on-line textual materials, such as for example news articles or Wikipedia pages, can serve as the basic components for educational materials. With this textual materials the toolkit inserts guidance and tasks that help focus student attention on the relevant characteristics of the materials. Also, teachers have the opportunity to monitor the learning processes and configure the lesson generation process when needed.

Based on the above principles Edia has developed a number of functional components:

• a text analysis module that automatically classifies texts on lexical and semantic characteristics.
• a lesson generator module that automatically creates lessons that fit with the learning goals, knowledge levels and interests of an individual user.
• an annotation module that teachers can use to annotate certain parts of textual materials (such as words, sentences and paragraphs) with variable annotation schema's
• a guidance module that automatically searches the internet for the availability of help sources (such as translations for words) with certain parts of texts. Guidance can also come from internal sources, for example the annotations created with the annotations module.
• learners can search the large collections of textual materials, for example using word occurrence or sentence structure. They can also 'smart search' the annotations that are manually added to the system.
• a number of configurable web crawlers that can be used to collect relevant textual materials from internet sources.
• a task/assignment generation module that is used to automatically generate tasks based on the material characteristics and the user's learning goals.

The above components are used in a number of language learning products, for example the newsreader for learning Dutch as a second language. You will find more information about the newsreader here. You can find information about other alane related topics using the 'more about alane' menu at the right side of your screen.