Minutes NGSLT Board 4th Oct 2005
Minutes of the 3rd meeting of the board of the Nordic Graduate School of
Language Technology (NGSLT)
Time: 4 October 2005, at 13.00 - 16.00
Place: Netmeeting
Present: Robin Cooper Chairmen
Kimmo Koskenniemi
Guntis Barzdins (for Inguna Skadina)
Ola Björklund
Vera Evdokimova
Daniel Hardt
Mare Koit
Tine Lassen
Mietta Lennes
Ruta Marcinkeviciene
Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson
Pavel Skrelin
Sari Hyvärinen Secretary
1. Formalia
Prof. Robin Cooper opened the meeting and was elected chairman
and Sari Hyvärinen secretary of the meeting. The minutes were
written on the whiteboard and approved at the meeting.
The agenda which was distributed in advance was accepted
as the agenda of the meeting.
2. Information
Courses currently being offered and number of NGSLT students
attending.
NGLST has received money from NordForsk for further activities.
3. Minutes of previous meeting
(http://www.ngslt.org/board/minutes050518.htm)
Item 3.1 The accounts of LT in the participating countries
have been moved to http://ngslt.org/docs/. These old versions
will be copied to Wiki by Gothenburg University and each country
is asked to update their account for 2005. The board encouraged
all to use Wiki in updating the accounts, but e-mail to Ola Björklund
ola@gslt.hum.gu.se is also a possible updating way.
Item 3.2 All mailing lists are now listed on http://ngslt.org/contact/
Additionally, a new working platform, Wiki, has been established
to the address http://ngslt.org/wiki/.
Item 3.4 An advisory board still needs to be worked on. Robin Cooper
and Kimmo Koskenniemi will work on this.
4. Student issues (student representatives)
There was discussion on the lack of PhD programme in LT/CL in
Lithuania. There are no quick ways to create them, so cooperation
and discussion on this topic will continue.
Course deadlines have caused some problems for students (see item
8 for further discussion).
Online publication of papers was also discussed. Wiki
was suggested to be a possibility for presenting unpublished
papers and getting for example feedback on them. The LT
journal is planned to be online and refereed (see item 9).
Requirements for supervisors were discussed. There are no formal
requirements, for technical aspects or otherwise. Supervisors are
qualified basically if they are qualified in their own
department to be a supervisor. Practical requirements are
informal participation, supporting students to take part in NGSLT,
informal discussions when relevant, refereeing for journal
perhaps. If regular arrangments are required, then NGSLT should
find ways of funding them. Kimmo Koskenniemi and Robin Cooper will
put requirements for supervisors on the NGSLT website.
For the record, NGSLT students who have graduated: Krister Lindén
and Anssi Yli-Jyrä from the University of Helsinki.
The board handled a question about students obtaining funds for
conferences and came to the conclusion that NordForsk wouldn't
allow this for non-Nordic events. Within the extended Nordic area
it should be an event which addresses extended inter-Nordic
interaction. Each such application for funds will be handled
separately.
5. Budget
The overall current state of budget was presented to the board by
Ola Björklund: there is still some old money left and NGSLT has
received from NordForsk the new funding of NOK 1.000.000 or ca.
EUR 125.000; about half of the new funding had been spent before
the autumn courses so the rest is expected to be spent during the
latter half of the year 2005.
Nordforsk has stated that they will not fund teaching as such,
except for the guest lecturers (lecture fees and travel expenses)
which are invited to have a course for graduate students in LT.
6. Courses for spring
Call for courses for spring 2006 has been sent out and the board
reminded each coutry to inform NGSLT about their course plans.
GSLT courses being planned are to be seen on this web page:
http://ngslt.org/application/courseapplication.html
Other courses will be added there, as well.
NGSLT students who wish to participate in GSLT courses without
presenting a paper should contact teachers individually about
dividing up credit points (a GSLT course normally 7,5 ECTS).
7. E-books and e-papers for course literature
The board discussed a possibility of getting course material
electronically available on the NGSLT web pages and decided that
Robin Cooper will build a wiki page for a working group on this
topic. People can join the working group by adding their name to
the Wiki page.
The working group has the following mandate: to build a Wiki page
with links to electronic archives, such as ACL
(http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/), citeseer, ACM
(http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm), and links to Nordic
documentation centres; to inform lecturers that they should try
to use material which is accessible through the web; to write to
publishers and authors as an organization about permissions.
8. Curriculum planning
The board discussed planning a curriculum and curricula in
different countries. According to student representatives,
different kinds of course deadlines have caused problems in
planning curriculum. One way to help the situation would be to
have a full list of courses with course descriptions
available for students before deadline. Generally, if courses have
their own deadlines, they will be followed.
The board decided to set up a Wiki working group; Kimmo
Koskenniemi will start the Wiki page for a working platform for
the group.
The curriculum working group has the following mandate: to look
at both Masters and PhD; to make info about PhD and Masters level
education available in LT descriptions so that comparison would be
possible; to present requirements for coursework for PhD; to aim
to create different but compatible programmes.
The board also discussed a double diploma, a system where
Master's degree is completed in two different universities in
Europe. This possibility will be further discussed within NGSLT;
a Wiki work group was also proposed for this issue.
Developing web-based courses would be another possibility in
making planning curriculum easier.
9. Journal
Nodalida in Joensuu decided to establish an association and
Nordic (extended, incl. Baltic countries and North-West Russia)
journal for LT. The working group includes professors Joakim
Nivre, Janne Bondi Johannesen and Kimmo Koskenniemi, who have had
one meeting so far. A postdoc in Helsinki, Pirkko Suihkonen, is
working on this.
The journal is planned to be an electronic journal, which is
fully refereed and the editorial board of which is built on
resource of our supervisors. Any students or other scholars from
the extended Nordic area, or researchers doing things relevant
for the area (e.g. language) can send articles, but not e.g. a
Japanese writing about Chinese LT. The journal is not planned to
concentrate on any particular fields within Language Technology.
10. Date of next meeting
Netmeeting Thursday 9 February 2006 at 13.00 Swedish time.
11. Any other business
It was stated that more help would be needed with settings ideal
for netmeetings on Marratech. The board members decided to set up
a Wiki based page in the internet for a work group, which
collects information about needs and experiences with Marratech.
Gathering the work groups takes place in the same manner as with
the other work groups working on Wiki.
