CPSC 532B

 Announcement  The course location is changing to SWNG 410 starting January 8

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Syllabus

Welcome to CSPC 532B, taught by Peter West. We will learn about open questions in NLP and AI, while providing the necessary background for new researchers to start tackling these problems. Where should someone who wants to research GPT-4 GPT-5 start?

This will be a seminar course, with paper presentations being the primary coursework. We will develop core academic skills: understanding research papers, their context, and their motivation; presenting research in a way that is clear and compelling for broad audiences; useful feedback and discussion.

Students will be graded based on:

(1) [UPDATED] 1 paper presentation. [60%] These will be solo or in pairs, depending on available slots. You should expect to present papers for roughly 40 to 50 minutes and lead discussion for the remainder of the class period. Submit your slides by email after your presentation, along with an explanation (max 1 page) of the decisions you made in designing the presentation and discussion. For pair presentations, both students should submit their own explanations. See more information below.

(2) Provide feedback for presentations. [10%] This will be submitted through Canvas. You should provide: (a) an aspect of the presentation or discussion that you found very effective, and (b) something you would add to the presentation or something that confused you. This can be short--submit what you think is reasonable and I will get in touch if you don't provide enough detail. You must submit feedback for 75% of presentations to receive full marks (starting from the first class you were registered for).

(3) Active participation in discussions. [30%] This is largely based on participation, so take part as much as you can! Although you don’t need to be an expert on every paper that is presented, you should read every paper in advance to make sure you are familiar enough to discuss it. Discussion includes (respectfully) asking questions anytime you are confused--this helps you learn material, and presenters learn about their audience. Given the large class size, being an active participant in every discussion may be difficult, but you should aim to attend most lectures (at least 80%) and regularly take part in discussions/ask questions. 

Presentation instructions and advice

Presentations should take roughly 40 to 50 minutes, summarizing the given paper and its significance. The two main goals are teaching your classmates and getting experience presenting. You can structure this however you would like--there are many ways to make a great presentation (e.g., focusing on critique, future ideas and open questions, or historical background). However, make sure to incorporate the following elements in some part of your slides:

• Present the key ideas/results from the perspective of the authors. How would you present this most effectively if it was your own research?

• Provide any necessary background information and context for an audience with only broad knowledge of LLMs to understand the paper

• Identify the open question that the work is centered on, and why this is important

• Provide your perspective on whether the paper was effective, and what still needs to be done

Expect to spend a significant amount of time crafting a strong set of slides. The expectation is not perfection, but you should try to find your own voice in how to best present the work, rather than simply copying from the paper. This is good practice for presenting your own research in the future as well.

Some high-level suggestions: don’t make the whole presentation out of screenshots from the paper, these will not be very effective; be open to only presenting a subset of results, and possibly making your own visualizations/examples (e.g., turn a table from the paper into a bar chart to make differences clearer); introduce information 1 piece at a time, for example, by using animations to have each bullet point appear; you should take twice as much time as you expect to present ideas, it is difficult for a live audience to absorb information so try to find the 3-5 most important ideas and present them very slowly and clearly; use Keynote or Powerpoint rather than Google Slides if possible, as these have many more features that can make your presentation clear (e.g. slide transitions and animations). Most of all, try to learn from the presentations of other students, and if you're stuck, online paper videos are a good place to start to get some ideas.

One simple way to format discussions following the presentation is by coming up with a set of open questions, but this is up to the presenters.

Remember to submit your slides and a maximum 1-page explanation of how you designed your presentation (by email). Pair presenters should both submit their own explanations. These can be short and should simply provide an explanation of any challenges and design decisions that arose in making a clear and effective presentation, as well as understanding the paper. In essence, how did you spend your time and effort?

I am always happy to meet with students before they present to provide feedback and guidance, and/or answer questions by email.

If you would like a more concrete structure for your presentation, see this example.

Todos for each student

(1) Sign up for 1 presentation slot below (up to 2 presenters per slot, but only pair up after single slots are filled)
NOTE: if some students drop the course, pair presenters may be reassigned

(2) Prepare your presentation, present, and lead the discussion

(3) Submit your slides and explanation by email

(4) Take part in discussions

(5) Provide feedback for other presentations through Canvas

Have fun!

Expectations

While academic discussions can often be lively and filled with debate, all students are expected to treat each other with respect and compassion. Students will have varying levels of experience and confidence, so we should all strive to make this a comfortable space for everybody to explore new ideas. Research can be supportive and fun if we decide to make it that way. 

Bullying, academic dishonesty, and any form of discrimination or harassment will not be tolerated. If you have any concerns, please immediately contact the course instructor or department.