Logistics
- Time
- Place
- Course Websites
- Prerequisite
- COSI 114b or permission of instructor
- Modality
- This course will be offered remotely for Fall 2020. Classes will be held via Zoom at the time specified in the course listing; however, based on demand we may make additional recitation times available to support more time zones. If at all possible, attendance during the live class is strongly recommended. We will make any necessary accommodations for students who are unable to synchronously attend the class and recitation times due to time zone differences. All course slides, notebooks, and recordings will be posted to Latte. Homework and programming assignments as well as projects will also be submitted via Latte. The instructor and TAs will also use Latte to make course announcements.
- Textbook (suggested)
- Reader
- Readings from classic sources in discourse and dialogue and HCI will be distributed through LATTE. We will also be tracking and reading state-of-the-art articles in Human-Robot-Interaction, multimodal communication, computational pragmatics, and situated grounding. These will be available on the course webpage and LATTE.
Requirements and Grading
- Class Preparation Time
- Success in this four-credit course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, assignments, papers, preparation for exams, etc.).
- Academic Integrity
- Students should finish homework and programming assignments, exams, and projects on their own unless they are explicitly stated as being collaborative.
- Grading
- Reading assignments are worth 65% of your grade. Writing assignments are worth 25%. Class participation and engagement is worth 10%.
- Reading Assignments
- We will review the literature in the field of communicating with computers and robots, focusing on the use of language and gesture, as well as other modalities. Each week, for 10 weeks, you will be required to read and comment on two technical research papers in the field, chosen from a list of 3-5 papers. This will involve a close reading and annotation, shared with other class participants and the instructor and TA through LATTE.
- Writing Assignments
- You are required to write two short analytic papers during the semester. The first paper will be a detailed discussion of several of the papers discussed and annotated during the semester, as grouped by topic or theme. You should focus on the following themes of analysis:
- Critical assessment of technical and research contributions made in the paper.
- System description, data developed, reported, or used for experiments.
- Existing approaches or algorithms used. Where appropriate, new algorithms developed.
- What is new and noteworthy about the paper? What does it contribute to the general problems in the field?
- The second paper will be organized as a topical area survey article, covering one of the major themes in the course. This paper requires the student to provide:
- a broad overview of the problems and challenges in the field for the intelligent layperson;
- a description of the data contributing to describing the phenomena;
- the major approaches currently adopted to explain the datasets;
- shortcomings and limitations of the currently adopted theories and approaches;
- suggestions for future directions.
- Deadlines
- Reading and annotation assignments are due every week, when the papers are discussed. Writing assignment papers are due by the end of the semester. The instructor and TA will provide iterative comments and suggested edits for each paper.
- Late submissions are subject to grade deduction (half a letter grade for each day of being late). Submissions that are more than a week late will not be accepted. Students who cannot take the exam during exam time due to uncontrollable circumstances (being sick, etc.) should contact the instructor for a make-up exam.