Objectives & Current Results
Main Objective
The main objective of the enetCollect Action is 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 is 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. EnetCollect will address this challenge by kick-starting a Research and Innovation (R&I) trend that combines the well-established domain of Language Learning with recent and successful crowdsourcing approaches in order to trigger an innovation breakthrough for the production of language learning material.
To address its main objective, enetCollect will also involve 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 might 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 aims at favoring its flexible and sustainable success in numerous, concurrent and mutually beneficial ways.
The main objective of enetCollect will be addressed by pursuing seven specific COST objectives. COST Actions distinguish objectives related to the creation of knowledge, termed Research-Coordination Objectives, and objectives related to creating and empowering a community, termed Capacity-Building Objectives. We detail below these objectives and the achievements performed so far. More specific information about the enetCollect’s objectives and Workplan can also be found in the Memorandum of Understanding.
Evaluation
In July 2019, for its mid-way report, enetCollect achievements were all evaluated with grades ranging from “very good” to “excellent” (see evaluation report).
Research-Coordination Objectives
Objective 1: Creating a theoretical framework for achieving a shared understanding of the topic, ranging from very concrete aspects such as defining a common terminology, to higher-level aspects such as evaluating the potential and limits of related approaches. This objective is pursued by the Working Groups and focuses on transforming the tacit knowledge of members into a consensual and codified form, and on the creation of blueprints (design specifications) at any relevant level (technical, usability, ethical, etc.).
Current Results. Till December 2019, we can observe that the combination of Language Learning and Crowdsourcing is taking multiple shapes according to the different initiatives and interests of our members. At present, no documents describing them as a whole have been created yet. It is however possible to know more about them through their related presentations and publications at external events (see dedicated page) and the numerous presentations made about them at the different enetCollect meetings.
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Objective 2: Gathering evaluation data for complementing the theoretical framework with factual information obtained from prototypical experiments and wide-ranging surveys in order to extend and root the theoretical framework and evaluate which aspects should be approached first.
Current Results. Till December 2019, a number of initiatives to gather evaluation data have been started but, just as for the theoretical framework, no documents are currently describing them as a whole. It is however also possible to know more about them through their related presentations and publications at external events (see dedicated page) and the numerous presentations made about them at the different enetCollect meetings. Some of the known prototypes developed in enetCollect are listed on a dedicated page.
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Objective 3: Disseminating the knowledge created and the achievements obtained to any relevant audience.
Current Results. Till December 2019, 13 calls for STSMs and multiple public calls for meeting participation were distributed and drew attention (and members) to enetCollect.13 announcements were made to the general public as well as 3 transfer-oriented presentations and 3 transfer-oriented publications (see dedicated page). Dissemination to R&I stakeholders was performed by means of 28 papers and 25 presentations (see dedicated page). All STSM reports are also made available on the dedicated part of the website.
Capacity-Building Objectives
Objective 4: Creating a balanced interdisciplinary core community of active stakeholders (and a core crowd reachable through it). This objective will be pursued by steadily expanding the network while maintaining a balance of member characteristics), through the Working Groups and through innovative dissemination and exploitation activities devised to foster collaborations, with special focus on ECIs (Early Career Investigators).
Current Results. Till December 2019, 256 stakeholders registered on the general mailing list and 188 of them created a profile on the intranet. Members come from 39 countries out of the 40 countries participating to the COST framework, as well as from Canada and United States. Also, 34 financed STSMs, lasting 402 days overall, led to profound cooperations on relevant subjects between 36 different members. 11 meetings and 2 training schools were organized with a total of 463 participants. More detailed statistics on enetCollect community can also be found on the dedicated statistics page.
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Objective 5: Establishing communication channels. This objective aims to ensure that the created community has well-identified communication channels allowing to easily share information and reach relevant members or stakeholders.
Current Results. Till December 2019, enetCollect’s intranet and website have been made available in August and October 2017 and are currently holding a substantial and growing amount of information. Since it was first launched, this website received 18k visitors. 13 mailing lists allowing the different components of enetCollect (Working groups, core group, etc.) to communicate were created. Dedicated Twitter and Facebook were also initiated to communicate enetCollect achievements on social medias. See this dedicated page for information about the communication channels.
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Objective 6: Fostering new funded initiatives. This objective aims to foster new initiatives complementing the Action. This objective will be pursued by using the Action’s achievements to plan
parallel or follow-up projects and its indicator of completion will be the successful preparation of two large proposals for European follow-up projects as well as several proposals to different regional and national funding schemes.
Current Results. Till December 2019, 9 related project proposals were submitted and 5 of them were successfully funded for and overall amount of ~700k euros. Several initiatives were taken to foster MCIF and Erasmus+ KA2 proposals too. A dedicated page of the website was also created to describe specific funding opportunities. For more information on enetCollect-related projects, see the dedicated page.
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Objective 7: Creating an association. This objective aims at creating an association with the purpose of continuing the work started in enetCollect and playing a driving role for the aforementioned community after the conclusion of the Action. This association will follow a long-term agenda, take over and maintain the outputs of the Action and handle subsequent editions of a recurrent scientific event. The indicator of completion for this objective will be the successful creation of a non-profit association and the number of its members.
Current Results. The creation of the association is foreseen towards the end of the third year, beginning of the fourth year.
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