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Overview

The French Digital Library (FDL) is an innovative digital education project. Students working on the project will build and manage the FDL platform, an online repository of multimedia resources in French. At the heart of the project is accessibility, outreach, and public engagement: how can we make online resources in French (and more generally foreign languages) more diverse and accessible to learners and teachers?

The specific goals of the project are:

• To research and assess diverse French resources currently available online
• To develop and design an accessible user-centred platform to host curated resources
• To adapt the platform to the current landscape and challenges of language and digital education

Students will be introduced to the fields of digital humanities, digital education, language education, and public engagement by taking part in training sessions, case-studies seminars, and group discussions.

We are particularly interested in:

• Computer Science students with some prior programming experience (e.g. web development, databases, or software engineering projects) who are motivated to work on a real-world digital platform with genuine users.
• Modern Languages students with an interest in language and/or digital education who are keen to have an impact on making languages more diverse and accessible.
• Students from any School with an interest in the above (programming/web development; digital education; languages; public engagement).

Project Strands and Key Contributions

This VIP is structured around two complementary strands: a software engineering strand and a content and curation strand. The software engineering strand focuses on the design and development of the next-generation French Digital Library platform, including its database, user-facing frontend and team-facing backend. In parallel, the content strand focuses on researching and evaluating current online resources in French and adding them to the platform. Students will primarily contribute to one strand, while benefiting from close interdisciplinary collaboration between technical and non-technical team members.

• Software engineering strand: in this strand students will take an active role in redesigning and rebuilding the French Digital Library as a modern, scalable web application. The current prototype has reached the limits of its architecture, and we are therefore looking to develop a more robust and extensible system. This would be achieved by migrating data from the existing system and working towards building a new version that is more usable, accessible (including AAA guidelines), and sustainable. A key aspect of the project is developing an effective search and discovery system that combines keyword-based retrieval with structured tagging and multi-dimensional filtering.

Students in this strand may contribute to the following areas:

• designing and implementing the system architecture, including frontend, backend, and database components
• developing backend services and APIs to support search, filtering, and data retrieval
• building an interactive and accessible frontend interface for efficient resource discovery
• modelling and optimising the database structure, including tagging and classification systems
• developing data extraction and migration pipelines from the current prototype
• and contributing to additional features, improvements, or technical directions identified during development

 

• Content and curation strand: in this strand students will take an active role in finding, evaluating, curating, and tagging relevant resources. They will work on user profiles (who are our users? what do they need?) and tailor the platform with them in mind. They will also tackle and expand their knowledge of current questions related to the project and digital education, language learning and pedagogy (language e-resources and accessibility; resource levels and challenges; sustainability, widening access and participation).

Students in this strand may contribute to the following areas:

• exploring and selecting online resources in French
• assessing resource suitability with users in mind
• assessing the accessibility of the platform and of the resources selected
• producing metadata information about the resources (tags; summaries)
• doing research on language learners’ profiles
• doing research on the state of language learning (in Scotland, in the UK, and beyond) and its challenges

Transferable skills and attributes

By working on the project, students will gain valuable experience in managing a real-life digital education project, working as a team, and delivering concrete outputs. This experience will raise their graduate attributes, enhance professional development, and prepare them for varied carriers.