Language Technologies for Lifelong Learning LTfLL -2008-212578 Project Deliverable Report D4.1 – Positioning Design Work Package WP4 Positioning the Learner Task 4.1 , 4.2 Date of delivery Contractual: 01-11-2008 Actual: 22-12-2008 Code name D4.1 Version: 1.0 Draft Final Type of deliverable Report Security (distribution level) Public Contributors Gaston Burek, Adriana J. Berlanga, Marco Kalz, Isobel Braidman, Alisdair Smithies, Fridolin Wild, Petya Osenova, Kiril Simov, Bernhard Hoisl, Lothar Lemnitzer, Slavi Stoyanov, Peter van Rosmalen, Jan Hensgens, Maria Regan, Jan Van Bruggen, Gillian Armitt Authors (Partner) UTU, OUNL, UNI-MAN, WUW, IPP-BAS, AURUS-KTS Contact Person Gaston Burek WP/Task responsible Gaston Burek EC Project Officer Mr. M. Májek Abstract (for dissemination) This report explains the issues of positioning learners in a knowledge domain, to recommend learning materials or courses to follow, and diagnosing learners’ conceptual development, to provide formative feedback and recommend remedial actions. It also discusses how Language Technologies can be used to perform these two tasks in a (semi) automatic way. To this end, the report presents an outline of the existing tools, methods and resources for the analysis of ePortfolios (task 4.1), and an overview of the process of acquiring and analysing data for measuring conceptual development (task 4.2). Furthermore, it presents a description of an initial set of experiments and test results, a plan for extending existing tools for ePortfolio analysis, as well as a description of the pilot scenarios that will be tested in the next cycle of the project. Keywords List Learner Positioning, Diagnosing Conceptual Development , ePortfolio, Latent Semantic Analysis, Knowledge Rich Approaches, Language Technologies, LTfLL Acknowledgements We would to thank Philippe Dessus for providing valuable comments on previous versions of this deliverable. LTfLL Project Coordination at: Open University of the Netherlands Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT Heerlen, The Netherlands Tel: +31 45 5762624 – Fax: +31 45 5762800