Teaching NLP in the LLM Era: Workshop TeachNLP 2026

How should Natural Language Processing be taught in the age of large language models? This question brought researchers and educators together at the Seventh Workshop on Teaching Natural Language Processing (TeachNLP 2026), co-located with EACL 2026 in Rabat, Morocco.

TeachNLP 2026 tackled the most pressing issues in how to design NLP courses and brought together instructors from various backgrounds to discuss, create, and refine instructional design and material.

MCML Junior Member Matthias Aßenmacher co-organized the workshop together with an international team of colleagues from Europe and the United States (Laura Biester, Middlebury College, Claudia Borg, University of Malta, György Kovács, Luleå University of Technology, Margot Mieskes, University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt, and Sofia Serrano, Lafayette College).

Opening Panel Discussion

They kicked off the workshop with an insightful panel discussion featuring MCML PI Hinrich Schütze (LMU Munich), MCML PI Barbara Plank (LMU Munich), Malvina Nissim (University of Groningen), and Ivan Habernal (University of Bochum).

Topics included:

• the future role of linguistics when teaching NLP & LLMs
• the role of LLMs and agents in teaching
• which skills are most important to teach in the LLM era

©M. Aßenamcher

Best Full Paper Award: "Practising responsibility: Ethics in NLP as a hands-on course"

Interactive Program and Awarded Contributions

The remainder of the workshop featured:

• two oral sessions with eight talks in total
• an interactive poster session
• a lively group discussion on teaching design and student assessment in the LLM era

Outstanding contributions were also recognized:

• Best Full Paper: “Practising responsibility: Ethics in NLP as a hands-on course”
• Best Teaching Materials Paper: “Teaching and Critiquing Conceptualization and Operationalization in NLP”

Check Out the Full Workshop Proceedings