Class meets Tuesday and Thursdays 9:35 – 10:50 AM on Zoom (https://vanderbilt.zoom.us/j/95454806798 ). As a seminar course, in-class time will be discussion rich (with lots of exhalation), and there are qualitative differences between online participation and in-class participation, with important advantages to online (e.g., no one sits at the back of class; everyone can easily see everyone else, no masks needed while talking), so I won’t rotate you, with some in class and some online. Everyone will be on Zoom. If you need to be at Vanderbilt (e.g., for focus of attention, for internet, for participation in your research lab or other classes), FGH 129 will be available to you during class time, but you must be socially distanced, you must wear a mask, and you must be on the Zoom meeting anyways. If you have strong objections to having video enabled during Zoom, or you don’t have a camera, please let me know. I assume that everyone knows how to use video conferencing backgrounds in order to protect privacy, should that be a concern for you.
There are no formal prerequisites to this course, other than graduate standing.
Each week we will do a combination of assigned readings and guided literature exploration. There will be weekly Brightspace discussion forum posts on the week’s material. At the end of each week, students will respond to at least one forum post by another student or by the instructor on Brightspace.
A typical Week k (in weeks 3-10) is structured as
- To Do After Thursday Class of Week k-1
- Start/complete Week k assigned article(s)
- To Do Before Tuesday Class of Week k
- Submit forum post on assigned article for week k by Sunday, 11:59 pm
- Class Tuesday of Week k
- Discussion of assigned article(s)
- To Do After Tuesday Class of Week k
- Find and read another related article (as specified on Schedule), and submit forum post on this article by Tuesday, 11:59 pm
- Class Thursday of Week k
- Discussion of student-discovered articles
- To Do After Thursday Class of Week k
- Post response(s) to Week k forum posts by Friday, 11:59 pm
- Start/complete Week k+1 assigned article
In your exploration you can draw from a number of resources, including some listed here. I hope its obvious, but while responsibilities are introduced under “To Do After …” and “To Do Before …” headings, you can start on subsequent week activities whenever you want and need to in order to meet the deadlines.
There is a paper due towards the end of the semester that can involve the implementation of a cognitive model or an intelligent human/computer interface, though an implementation is not required. Students will critique selected papers by other students and each student will prepare a video on the paper content.
Grading
Grades will be based on the following weights (which may change modestly before the course starts):
- Attendance and active in-class participation: 10%
- Virtual Forum posts and responses: 45%
- Project Paper, Critiques, and Presentation: 35%
Final Exam:10% (Bonus)
Attendance and in-class participation
Class attendance is easily measured, and participation in discussion is more subjective. Typically Doug will open with comments followed by general discussion. The quality of discussion will be informed by demonstrated knowledge of the week’s assigned materials. A perfect participation score will be obtained by a student who attends all classes (or has an excused absence ahead of time), but points for missed classes can be recouped through substantive comments in other class meetings. Notice that the total weight of this grading factor is low. I strongly prefer that you make it and participate, even if “only” through close listening, but you can still do well in the course even if you miss some Zoom meetings.
Virtual Forum posts
Each week students will post individual reflections of approximately 250 words (i.e., no less than 200 words and no more than 300 words) on the week’s assigned article, and an additional post on an article found by the student. The virtual forum posts will cite sources and acknowledge influences in the post. More on virtual forum posts and responses.
Forum responses
Students are required to read other student posts made, and to respond to one or more of those posts of the same week. There is no word upper limit on responses, but responses should be at least 200 words each. There are different forms of high-quality responses. A response can be a response to the original post or to another response. More on virtual forum posts and responses.
Paper, Critiques, and Presentation
Your original paper will be on a topic in the nexus of computation and natural cognition of the student’s choice, after consulting with and approval from the instructor. The paper may include a computer implementation in a language of the student’s choice, but no implementation is required — a fine work of scholarship will do nicely.
Each student’s paper will be available to other students. Each student will critique the papers of 2 other students. Each student will create a video presentation on their paper of approximately 10 minutes.
At a suitable time there will be a reduction in normal weekly responsibilities to allow for time to work on the paper, critiques, and presentation. Some class time will be used to update the class on paper progress, and these updates will be incorporated into the paper grade.
Final Exam
An exam will ask you to identify important points from the readings and projects; the final week of class will review this material.