Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) is an interdisciplinary scientific field, which involves the search for and study of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applications in teaching and learning.

ILSP has a prolonged experience and active presence in the field of TEL for more than 15 years. The main action lines implemented in this field involve the design, development and evaluation of e-learning applications for Ancient and Modern Greek, addressed to various target groups, covering a wide age spectrum and meeting diverse learning needs (native speakers of primary and secondary education, young learners of Greek as a second language, adult (self-)learners of Greek as a foreign language in the context of life-long learning etc.). Language resources for educational purposes (e-corpora, e-lexica) and educational scenarios for the pedagogical exploitation of these systems have also been developed. The applications have been certified and validated by formal institutions both within Greece (e.g. Pedagogical Institute, Ministry of Education) and abroad (e.g. CALICO/Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium).

The aforementioned language learning systems employ and exploit the multimedia technologies, provide a satisfactory interactivity level and comprise language activities which conform to the “closed-ended” pattern with pre-envisaged learner inputs. Language technology tools and resources have been embedded in these applications in order to facilitate the language acquisition process (e.g. text-to-speech converters, automatic phonetic transcription, spelling checkers, grammar annotation and declension tools, e-lexica etc.), while multimedia cultural content often complements the language learning material, given the blurring boundaries between the two.

Basic and applied research in the field is directed towards investigating how to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of tools and technologies in language education and implementing pedagogy-informed and highly interactive TEL applications, which are compliant with learner needs and foster learner autonomy. In addition, TEL is fertilized by research outcomes in the field of Language Development and Assessment.

Accomplishments so far:

• the first multimedia courseware launched in the local market (1993)
• the first school network in Greece (1994)
• more than 20 language courseware titles
• free on-line service for learning Modern Greek
• certified educational applications deployed in all schools in Greece and Cyprus and in educational institutions offering Greek language courses abroad

Current R&D focus:

• “intelligent” Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) systems for the Greek language and integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Speech Technologies in TELL
• automatic diagnosis and evaluation of learner responses
• on-the-spot provision of individualized corrective feedback
• learner modelling
• automatic exercise generators
• authentic text retrieval in accordance to the user’s language proficiency level
• conversational agents and learning companions
• mobile learning