LEVERAGE, a three-year (1996-1998) collaborative research project partially funded by the European Commission's DG XIII ACTS programme ¹, set out to demonstrate how the use of multimedia broadband technology can support rapidly expanding language learning needs.

The consortium of LEVERAGE partners brought together a multi-disciplinary team of academics and industrialists from across Europe. Their objectives were:

• to develop, implement, and field trial
  a complete multimedia network infrastructure to support joint work between and on the sites of partners University of Cambridge, Insitut National des Télécommunications, and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
• to assess the performance of the multimedia network through an extended trial and evaluation by non-specialist users.
• to determine the potential for the exploitation and commercialisation of networked multimedia systems for wider application in education, industry, public services and commerce.

The basis of LEVERAGE is that a learner in one country contacts a learner in another, and that they assist each other in the performance of a mutual task, alternately playing the role of tutor (own native language) and learner (second language). Users are provided with multimedia terminals giving access to data resources, high quality audio and video, multimedia courseware and dictionaries, multipoint communication (such as videoconferencing) and recording capabilities.

In order to evaluate the extent to which the broadband communications facilities offered to the end user (the student) effectively supported the pedagogical framework proposed, three user trials were organised on and between the sites of:

• University of Cambridge
• Institut National des Télécommunications (Paris)
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Third international user trial of LEVERAGE system

The third international user trial of the LEVERAGE system, between the University of Cambridge, the Institut National des Télécommunications in Paris and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, took place over a period of 8 weeks in October and December 1998.

Fritz-Lorenz Born, Solution Architect at ASCOM in Bern, Switzerland gives an in-depth account of the challenges faced by the LEVERAGE team when setting up the network for the interconnection of the three sites during the 3rd international LEVERAGE trial in the Technophile section of the project newsletter LEVERAGE News 5.

Ramon Felder, research engineer at ASCOM Tech in Bern, Switzerland looks towards the challenges of finding new networking options for the third trial in the Technophile section of LEVERAGE News 4.

Ana Ibañez and Mar Duque, English Teachers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, give an account of the trial of the LEVERAGE system from the perspective of language teachers and learners in the Pedagogical issues section of LEVERAGE News 5.

Second international trial of LEVERAGE system

The second trial, between the University of Cambridge and the Institut National des Télécommunications in Paris, took place between January and March 1998.

Katherine Maillet, associate professor at the Institut National des Télécommunications in Evry describes the results of the second international trials of the LEVERAGE system in the Pedagogical issues section of LEVERAGE News 4.

First trial of LEVERAGE system

The first trial of the LEVERAGE system took place at the University of Cambridge between the Language Centre, Churchill College and the Language Unit of the Engineering Department during February and March 1997.

Jan Wong, research assistant at the University of Cambridge Language Centre, gives an insider's overview of the first LEVERAGE trial in the Pedagogical issues section of LEVERAGE News 2.

Antonio Seminara, research engineer at ASCOM Tech in Bern, describes the Cambridge site network for the first trial of the LEVERAGE system in the Technophile section of LEVERAGE News 2.

The ACTS (Advanced Communications Technologies and Services) Programme was established under the Fourth Framework Programme of European activities in the field of research and technological development and demonstration (1994-1998). The Programme supports research and development in advanced communications in order to facilitate economic development and social cohesion in Europe. Under the Programme, individual companies, public sector organisations, research institutes, schools and universities agree to work together as individual project consortia, pooling their knowledge and resources in pursuit of specific research objectives covered by the ACTS workplan. All ACTS research is conducted in the context of usage trials to ensure relevance of the results and to encourage a broadening of awareness of the benefits that advanced communications may bring. Twenty two National Host organisations support project experiments and act as a window to the many trials which are already being conducted within the countries concerned, and also internationally.

More information on ACTS and the National Hosts is available from:

ACTS Information Window

http://www.infowin.org/acts/

The National Hosts

http://www.uk.infowin.org/acts/analysys/nathosts/index.htm