February 4, 2011
School of Medicine, Kochi
 

On January 13, students at the Amritapuri campus received yet another opportunity to gain an insight into international research and development activities.
 

Paola Monachesi, assistant professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, spoke to students about her current research work.
 

With research interests spanning the areas of language resources and e-learning, social networks and social semantic web, Ms. Monachesi is currently focusing on a project titled Language Technology for Lifelong Learning.
 

The project aims to create the next-generation of support services for knowledge creation in educational and organizational settings.
 

“The services should facilitate learners and tutors in accessing formal and informal knowledge sources in the context of a learning task,” explained the guest speaker.
 

“An important innovation of the system is that it enables users to connect to other people, who can function as co-learners and / or tutors. We expect this to lead to a more personalized learning experience.”
 

A Common Semantic Framework is being developed that will allow learners to identify, retrieve and exchange learning material.
 

Would this system offer any significant benefits as opposed to conducting a standard Google search for learning material?
 

“Our system will provide results that take the following into account – the learner’s profile, his or interests, preferences and social network. Recommendations will be prioritized and categorized based on these factors.”
 

Ms. Monachesi’s current project follows a long list of notable achievements, while serving at institutions such as the IBM Research Centre in Rome, University of Tilburg, University of Tübingen and University of Malta.
 

She was the project leader for a national project on typological databases, and is now the principal investigator of a new initiative on human-machine content co-creation.
 

These coming months may well see a new collaboration between Amrita and Utrecht, as our e-learning lab explores opportunities for working together.
 

“I am glad that so many students attended my talk,” wrote Ms. Monachesi, from Netherlands. “I also learned a lot from my meetings with the Amrita faculty members.”