CSCI-644: Natural Language Dialogue Systems - Spring 2024
Assignments
Reading and Reviewing Assigned Papers (10% of grade)
Students are required to read and comment on the required readings each week, starting with the readings for week 3. Based on the readings, each student should prepare at least one question and optionally additional comments about each one of the required readings. These could be questions about aspects of the research that were interesting or unclear to you, or comments you have on the methodology or results in the work, or implications of the work, or how it might be applied to other work.
Students should post their questions on the course Piazza site in the topic for that week's readings by 11:59 pm the day prior to that week's lecture, and come prepared to discuss their questions in class.
Participation in Class Discussions (10% of grade)
Students should participate in class, asking questions when something is not clear, or asking about alternative methods or implications of the work described, or discussing other ideas include relevant to their own research or other readings. If there is no time during class itself, please use the Piazza site to continue the discussion outside of classtime.
(Co-)leading one Discussion Topic Based on Assigned Readings (10% of grade)
Students will lead discussion of one special topic by themselves or team up with another student (no more than 2 students per topic), including a class presentation of 1-2 papers on that topic. The special topic will be selected from the given list, or by approval of instructors. Discussion topic choice due week 7 (February 20, 11:59 pm).
Assignments (35% of grade)
Assignment 1 distributed week 1, pdf, due week 3 (January 23, 11:59 pm, submit on Blackboard under "Assignments-Assignment 1")
Assignment 2 distributed week 3, pdf, due week 5 (February 6, 11:59 pm, submit on Blackboard under "Assignments-Assignment 2")
Assignment 3 distributed week 6, pdf, due week 9 (March 5, 11:59 pm, submit on Blackboard under "Assignments-Assignment 3"))
Main Project (35% of grade)
Students will complete a major project in an area related to the course themes. The project could be building a new dialogue system, or analysis of dialogue data, or building a component that could be used by a system, or an experiment to evaluate a system. Students may (and are encouraged to) form teams of 2-3 people to collaborate on a project - however it must be made clear what parts of the project each student is primarily responsible for.
The project will have four deliverables.
First, in week 9 (March 5, 11:59 pm), students should submit a 1-2 page project proposal abstract (10% of project grade), describing the area of the project and main intended contribution and approach to evaluate. The instructors will meet individually with each student or group to give feedback about the proposal.
By week 11-12 (March 31, 11:59 pm), students will submit a 4-8 page project specification (20% of project grade), defining the final goals of the project, work already completed and what the students believe to be realistic goals for the conclusion of the project. It is expected that the project definition may evolve between the initial proposal abstract and specification.
In the final two weeks of the class, (weeks 14 and 15) students will make a short public presentation (20% of project grade) to the class of the goals and contributions of the project.
Finally, before the final exam date (May 1, 4 pm), students will submit a final project report (25% of project grade) of no more than 8 pages (not including references), and possibly supplementary material, such as figures, data, code, demos or videos.
The remaining 25% of the project grade will be based on an overall assessment of the students' ability to incorporate course material and perform innovative research.