JaLea

Project Full name: JaLea: a Japanese e-Learning system

Active from/to: 2016 – ongoing

Research Team: Prof. Marcella Mariotti (Principal Investigator), Dr. Alessandro Mantelli (System Developer), Dr. Giovanni Lapis (Research Fellow), M.A. Federica Tocci (Project Coordinator)

Participants: more than 40 Ca’ Foscari University of Venice students throughout the years

What is this project about?

JaLea’s story begins in 2008 when Prof. Marcella Mariotti began the creation of BunpoHyDict in Japan. Together with Dr. Alessandro Mantelli, in 2011 she initiated the ITADICT project, the first online Japanese-Italian dictionary, also financed in 2012 by the European Social Fund, for the creation of technical dictionaries on leather, furniture and textiles through the research grant “Linguistic tools to support the internationalization of companies from Veneto: sectoral terminology of companies in the textile, tanning, chemical-environmental, furniture and upholstery sectors,” of which Prof. Marcella Mariotti is supervisor. Itadict and the database on which it is based then became a departmental project in 2012, also involving students who could not leave for Japan due to the Fukushima Disaster of March 11, 2011. 

In 2012, thanks to funds from the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Dr. Alessandro Mantelli started the Edukanji project, a Kanji self-learning application for Italian speakers. 

In 2016 Mitsubishi Corporation supported the research to update and expand BunpoHyDict:  Prof. Mariotti thus guided the birth of the current JaLea with Dr. Giovanni Lapis and Dr. Alessandro Mantelli, who makes it the case-study for his doctoral thesis “Sustainable Design Strategies of E-learning Systems for Japanese Language study for Italian speakers” (2016-2019) first, and the basis for the research grant throughout 2019-2021, “Learner-centered and teacher supportive online systems for Japanese Language Learning & Teaching,” both supervised by Prof. Marcella Mariotti.

In 2020, due the Covid-19 pandemic students found themselves once again in a position in which they couldn’t leave for Japan or do internship activities. Thanks to the Japan Foundation’s support for the project “A multidimensional Website Project to improve Japanese Language and IT skills – Collaborative Creativity in Response to COVID-19,” JaLea 2020 comes to life again: M.A. Federica Tocci, supervised by Prof. Marcella Mariotti, coordinated more than 40 students participating in the project, expanding both JaLea and Jalea Business materials and content, as well as the dictionary linked to them.