Linguistic Meta-Educational Engine for Audiovisual Content
LIMED will create a new form of interactive audiovisual content: the linguistic quiz-enabled video.
Our project shall develop an innovative demonstrator than can turn any available foreign language video (e.g., TV serials or evening news) into a terrific learning tool for the language in question.
Thus, the LIMED project is anchored in the new field of Edutainment (Education + Entertainment), proposing the automatic generation of comprehension quizzes on highly attractive preexisting audio-visual content (for example, foreign language TV series or news). This engine will be implemented for contents that can be accessed on the go, anywhere and at any time.
LIMED’s ambition: to propose a new interactive, individualized and motivating solution to learn a foreign language while watching and enjoying one’s favorite original language video on a mobile device or PC laptop.
The interactivity introduced by the quiz, combined with a scoring system as used in video games (instant results and results evolution) shall encourage regular practice. The user experience has to be perceived (especially by younger users) as entertainment, rather than education.
While maintaining a pragmatic and focused approach, targeting a measurable outcome, the automatic quiz service, LIMED innovation is twofold. First it brings together areas of expertise that rarely work in common (language learning methods and multimedia characterization) and second it targets a web-based, open multimedia description system covering both low-level descriptions and high level ontologies.
Beyond the usual forms of interactivity (e.g. video/multimedia games, video inserts, etc.) this project is paving the way to a whole new form of interactivity. The LIMED engine will generate a linguistic comprehension quiz for any video, turning one’s favorite TV programs into learning material.
With respect to language learning approaches, the innovation lies in the fact that the LIMED engine can be applied to pre-existing media content, i.e. content that is already known and compelling to the user, therefore strengthening the learning because a cognitive frame of reference already exists and an adoption pattern is fostered.
The context of the LIMED project
Foreign-language learning: the need for individual, personal entertaining and efficient exercises
In the Eurobarometer study, called “European and their languages” from February 2006, lack of time and motivation are the main reasons indicated by European citizens for not studying foreign languages. In France, 43% of the employees wish to try podcasts and training on their mobile phones, according to a 2008 study conducted by CEGOS.
The digitalization of content and the development of internet based networks have accelerated the media content production and distribution and led to an increased individualization (“one man, one device”) and personalization (“to my taste”) of media consumption.
In this respect the rapid emergence and massive democratization of nomadic devices (mobile phones: 4bn devices on the planet already, and personal computers: in a family, several individual laptops are typically replacing the usual single family desktop computer) has also supported his trend.
Such demand for new educational contents is even more acute for foreign-language learning.
Young learners wish to find in their language learning the same experience that they have in their digital lives.
If one cannot avoid a grammar class, learning by heart vocabulary and lists of verbs, gamelike exercises and simulations are taking off among the “digital natives”. Learners’ attention has to be properly captivated for the teaching to be efficient.
=> For these new devices and new usage, we must create new educational content that are more efficient, whilst at the same time more entertaining.