Abstract

Developing an accessible curriculum of laboratory courses for undergraduate students is vital to progress in human language technology. In this article, we describe means to provide students with access to leading-edge language technologies, and tools to combine these technologies in spoken dialogue systems of their own design. The tools and technologies used in the proposed laboratory courses will enable students to build interactive dialogue systems for new and exciting applications and to research and perhaps improve the core language technologies. By making them freely available (via the Internet or CD-ROM) with documentation and support, our community can remove some of the main entry barriers to developing new programs in human language technology in our colleges and universities. In this way, students are not only exposed to new technology, they become involved in the process of creating it.

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