European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques
2017-2021
EnetCollect was a large international network aiming at performing the groundwork to set into motion a Research and Innovation (R&I) trend combining the well-established domain of Language Learning with recent and successful crowdsourcing approaches. By doing so, enetCollect aimed at unlocking a crowdsourcing potential available for all languages and at triggering an innovation breakthrough for the production of language learning material, such as lesson or exercise content, and language-related datasets, such as language resources.
EnetCollect was funded for 4 years as a COST Action. COST Actions are a flexible, fast, effective and efficient networking instrument for researchers, engineers and scholars to cooperate and coordinate nationally funded research activities. COST Actions allow European researchers to jointly develop their own ideas in any science and technology field. COST Actions are bottom-up science and technology networks, open to researchers and stakeholders with a duration of four years. They are active through a range of networking tools , such as workshops, conferences, training schools, short-term scientific missions (STSMs), and dissemination activities. EnetCollect was started in March 2017 and will run in the form of a COST Action until March 2021. It was later extended for 6 months till September 2021.
The main objective of the enetCollect Action was to address the major European challenge of fostering the language skills of all citizens regardless of their diversified social, educational, and linguistic backgrounds. To this end, the Action was concerned with the domain of Language Learning and specifically focuses on enhancing the production of learning material in order to cope with the increasing demand for language learning material and the striking diversification of learner profiles.
To address its main objective, enetCollect involved a variety of R&I players who are working on language-related topics and have laborious and/or complex tasks that can be approached by crowdsourcing. Indeed, even though Language Learning was not be of direct interest to them, being able to make use of a vast and continuous workforce generated by crowdsourcing on learners’ and teachers’ actions constitutes a ground-breaking opportunity for experts, e.g., in linguistics, computational linguistics or software engineering/ergonomics. By involving language-related R&I players, enetCollect aimed at favoring its flexible and sustainable success in numerous, concurrent and mutually beneficial ways.
