At this year’s JTEL Summer school, Sebastian Gombert and Amir Rajabi from DIPF hosted a workshop on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Education and Research. Participants explored how modern language technologies can support both educational practice and scientific inquiry. The session introduced core NLP concepts and discussed applications ranging from automated assessment and feedback generation to classroom discourse analysis, literature synthesis, and retrieval-augmented generation.
Following the introductory presentation, participants worked collaboratively in small groups to design NLP-based solutions for real-world challenges. Drawing on both provided examples and their own research interests, attendees developed concepts for systems such as educational recommender tools, feedback assistants, and research support applications. Interactive collaboration was supported through discussion, sketching, and digital whiteboarding.
The workshop highlighted not only the growing potential of large language models and related technologies, but also the importance of critically evaluating their use in educational and research contexts. Participants left with a stronger understanding of how language technologies can be applied to educational data, support scientific workflows, and help structure knowledge in meaningful and actionable ways.