Where will the Standards for Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning Come from?

Intelligent computer-assisted language learning—Intelligent CALL, or ICALL—can be defined in a number of ways, but one understanding of the term is that of CALL incorporating language technology (LT) for e.g. analyzing language learners’ language production, in order to provide the learners with more flexible—indeed, more ‘intelligent’—feedback and guidance in their language learning process. However, CALL, ICALL and LT have been three largely unrelated research areas, at least until recently. In the world of education, ‘e-learning’ and ‘ICT-based learning’ are the new buzzwords. Generally, what is meant is some kind of web-based setup, where course materials are delivered via the Internet or/and learners are collaborating using computer-mediated communication (CMC). An important trend in ICT-based learning is that of standardization for reusability. Standard formats for all aspects of so-called ‘instructional management systems’ are rapidly gaining acceptance in the e-learning industry. Thus, learning applications will need to support them in order to be commercially viable. This in turn means that the proposed standards should be general enough to support all conceivable kinds of educational content and learning systems. In this paper, we will discuss how ICALL applications can be related to the various standards proposals, basing our discussion on concrete experiences from a number of (I)CALL projects, where these standards are used or where their use has been contemplated.