Experiences within a pre-bachelor programme for refugees : insights from Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands

The current ‘migration crisis’ in Europe started at the end of 2014, as migrants, primarily from Africa and Syria, and mainly due to war, arrived in Europe in big numbers. Initially, the European Council labelled the situation as tragic (European Council statement 2015, European Commission and its priorities, 2018). With the growing influx of migrants, member states started referring to the situation as a security problem, resulting in a greater reluctance to accept newcomers into their territory. In February 2016, the EU member states imposed a European border, deployed coast guards and implemented a joint Turkey action plan. “Fortress Europe” was gaining momentum. Europe promised aid to Western Balkan countries in handling the massive migration waves. Countries were forced to accept a quota of migrants (Bauerová, 2015).peer-reviewe

Collecting a corpus of Dutch SMS

In this paper we present the first freely available corpus of Dutch text messages containing data originating from the Netherlands and Flanders. This corpus has been collected in the framework of the SoNaR project and constitutes a viable part of this 500-million-word corpus. About 53,000 text messages were collected on a large scale, based on voluntary donations. These messages will be distributed as such. In this paper we focus on the data collection processes involved and after studying the effect of media coverage we show that especially free publicity in newspapers and on social media networks results in more contributions. All SMS are provided with metadata information. Looking at the composition of the corpus, it becomes visible that a small number of people have contributed a large amount of data, in total 272 people have contributed to the corpus during three months. The number of women contributing to the corpus is larger than the number of men, but male contributors submitted larger amounts of data. This corpus will be of paramount importance for sociolinguistic research and normalisation studies

Introducing the CLARIN-NL Data Curation Service

Abstract CLARIN-NL is a project directed at the development of a sustainable research infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences. An integral part of such an infrastructure constitute the resources (data and tools) which researchers in the various disciplines employ. Whether the infrastructure will be successful in supporting the needs of the research communities it intends to cater for depends on a number of factors. One factor is that resources that are or could be relevant to the wider research community are made visible through this infrastructure and, to the extent possible, accessible and usable. Over the past decades numerous datasets have been collected and annotated by researchers for use in their own research. Often such data sets sank into oblivion once the research results had been published, while occasionally data were actually lost. With the years it has become apparent that unless appropriate action is undertaken to actively curate existing resources, many are at the risk of being lost as individual researchers or research groups often lack the expertise and the means to take the necessary measures to ensure their future availability. By resource curation we mean the planning, allocation of financial and other means, and application of preservation methods and technologies to ensure that digital information of enduring value remains accessible and usable. It encompasses material that begins its life in digital form as well as material that is converted from traditional analog to digital formats. Digital information must be stored long-term and error-free, with means for retrieval and interpretation, for the entire time span the information is required for; in other words, it must be possible to decode and transform the retrieved files -of texts, charts, images or sound -into usable representations (cf. Hedstrom 1997). Resource curation is important -from an economic point of view; Curation is needed to prevent loss of resources that were created at substantial efforts and expenses. Loss may occur as a result of media deterioration or digital obsolescence. Costs may incur when resources are lost and resources must be rebuilt. In some cases, resources are unique and cannot be replaced if destroyed or lost. -in terms of scientific interest; Curation grants access to the resources to a wider user community, allowing researchers to share access to data sets and permit replicability in research. -for reasons of cultural heritage. From the start of the project (2009), in CLARIN-NL funding has been available for projects directed at resource curation. Although a number of curation projects were undertaken, the calls for proposals have been less successful in reaching resource producers and owners who were not already aware of and/or participating in CLARIN-NL. In October 2010 the CLARIN-NL Executive board Board therefore initiated a pilot project that should investigate the need and possibility for establishing a Data Curation Service (DCS) task force that would salvage valuable corpora and data sets that are at the risk of being lost. The idea was that a dedicated team of specialists should be made responsible for curating data residing with humanities researchers, especially those who are reluctant or incapable of undertaking th

Introducing the CLARIN-NL Data Curation Service

Abstract In this paper we introduce the CLARIN-NL Data Curation Service. We highlight its tasks and its mediating position between researchers and the CLARIN Data Centres. We outline a scenario for successful data curation and stress the need to take notice of the factors that determine the desirability and feasibility of data curation. Finally, we present and discuss an exemplary case that illustrates the relevant issues involved in setting up a data curation plan

Balancing SoNaR: IPR versus Processing Issues in a 500-Million-Word Written Dutch Reference Corpus

In The Low Countries, a major reference corpus for written Dutch is beingbuilt. We discuss the interplay between data acquisition and data processingduring the creation of the SoNaR Corpus. Based on developments in traditionalcorpus compiling and new web harvesting approaches, SoNaR is designed tocontain 500 million words, balanced over 36 text types including bothtraditional and new media texts. Beside its balanced design, every text sampleincluded in SoNaR will have its IPR issues settled to the largest extentpossible. This data collection task presents many challenges because everydecision taken on the level of text acquisition has ramifications for the levelof processing and the general usability of the corpus. As far as thetraditional text types are concerned, each text brings its own processingrequirements and issues. For new media texts - SMS, chat - the problem is evenmore complex, issues such as anonimity, recognizability and citation right, allpresent problems that have to be tackled. The solutions actually lead to thecreation of two corpora: a gigaword SoNaR, IPR-cleared for research purposes,and the smaller - of commissioned size - more privacy compliant SoNaR,IPR-cleared for commercial purposes as well

The latest development of the DELAD project for sharing corpora of speech disorders

Corpora of speech of individuals with communication disorders (CSD) are invaluable resources for education and research, but they are costly and hard to build and difficult to share for various reasons. DELAD, which means 'shared' in Swedish, is a project initiated by Professors Nicole Muller and Martin Ball in 2015 that aims to address this issue by establishing a platform for researchers to share datasets of speech disorders with interested audiences. To date four workshops have been held, where selected participants, covering various expertise including researchers in clinical phonetics and linguistics, speech and language therapy, infrastructure specialists, and ethics and legal specialists, participated to discuss relevant issues in setting up such an archive. Positive and steady progress has been made since 2015, including refurbishing the DELAD website (http://delad.net/) with information and application forms for researchers to join and share their datasets and linking with the CLARIN K-Centre for Atypical Communication Expertise (https://ace.ruhosting.nl/) where CSD can be hosted and accessed through the CLARIN B-Centres, The Language Archive (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/) and TalkBank (https://talkbank.org/). The latest workshop, which was funded by CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) was held as an online event in January 2021 on topics including Data Protection Impact Assessments, reviewing changes in ethics perspectives in academia on sharing CSD, and voice conversion as a mean to pseudonomise speech. This paper reports the latest progress of DELAD and discusses the directions for further advance of the initiative, with information on how researchers can contribute to the repository.Peer reviewe

Effects of augmented visual feedback during balance training in Parkinson's disease: A pilot randomized clinical trial

AbstractBackgroundBalance training has been demonstrated to improve postural control in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The objective of this pilot randomized clinical trial was to investigate whether a balance training program using augmented visual feedback is feasible, safe, and more effective than conventional balance training in improving postural control in patients with PD.MethodsThirty-three patients with idiopathic PD participated in a five-week training program consisting of ten group treatment sessions of 60 min. Participants were randomly allocated to (1) an experimental group who trained on workstations consisting of interactive balance games with explicit augmented visual feedback (VFT), or (2) a control group receiving conventional training. Standing balance, gait, and health status were assessed at entry, at six weeks, and at twelve weeks follow-up.ResultsSixteen patients were allocated to the control group and seventeen to the experimental group. The program was feasible to apply and took place without adverse events. Change scores for all balance measures favored VFT, but the change in the primary outcome measure, i.e. the Functional Reach test, did not differ between groups (t(28) = -0.116, p = .908). No other differences between groups were statistically significant.ConclusionsVFT proved to be a feasible and safe approach to balance therapy for patients with PD. In this proof-of-concept study VFT was not superior over conventional balance training although observed trends mostly favored VFT. These trends approached clinical relevance only in few cases: increasing the training load and further optimization of VFT may strengthen this effect.Trial registrationControlled Trials, ISRCTN47046299