Automatic Generation of Personalised Basic Skills Summary Reports

Main Objectives

Practical

Encourage more people to acknowledge basic skills problems and seek assistance. This technology should be commercially attractive to organisations that are concerned about poor literacy and numeracy levels, such as colleges, employers, and the prison service.

Scientific

Develop techniques for generating appropriate reports for people with poor basic skills. Such people need "easy to read but not childish" texts, which respect their intelligence but at the same time are understandable and tailored to their literacy and numeracy levels.

SkillSum Methodology

Software development

The assessment tool will be a web-based version of CTAD's existing Target Skills: Initial Assessment tool. The report generator will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Generation (NLG) technology. As in previous projects we have worked on, we will first quickly develop an initial prototype version of the system, partially basing this on the GIRL reporting tool, the subject of a just-completed PhD thesis at Aberdeen University. We will then iteratively refine and improve the prototype, based on pilot experiments and associated feedback from learners and basic-skills tutors.

Evaluation

We will install SkillSum in several Further Education colleges in the Birmingham area, and perhaps in other venues which are involved in basic skills delivery, such as community centres. We will then measure if there is any increase in the number of students (community centre users, etc) who enrol in basic skills courses, as compared to the previous year. We will also measure enrolment changes in control venues where our system is not installed, to factor out the impact of extraneous factors such as basic skills advertising campaigns.

Implications

Poor basic skills is a major problem in the UK; one in five adults are not functionally literate, and one in four are not functionally numerate. Although many programmes have been established to teach basic skills, many people with poor skills do not sign up for them, because they do not realise (or wish to admit) that they have skills problems. SkillSum, by allowing people to assess themselves privately and confidentially, in a time and place of their choosing, should encourage more people to assess themselves and realise that they need help.

Even with more uptake of basic skills courses, there will still be many people in the UK who have limited numeracy and literacy. SkillSum's technology for generating appropriate texts for people with limited basic skills could be used by other IT systems as well, and hence could help make the IT world (including the Internet and Web) more accessible to people with limited basic skills.

Participants

• Total People, Stoke-on-Trent
• Karten CTEC Centre, Derbyshire
• South Lanarkshire College, Village Campus, East Kilbride

Project Duration

October 2003 to December 2005