Project

Published

January 18, 2024

This page contains detailed information about the course project.

Overview

The main purpose of the project is to give you the opportunity to identify, assess, and use NLP research literature (learning outcome 4). You will also deepen the knowledge you have acquired in the other parts of the course.

Topic

You can either do the standard project on syntactic parsing or work on a project on a self-proposed topic. The general structure and requirements are the same for both types of projects.

For examples of topics that have been explored in the course, see the abstracts from previous years:

Deliverables

While you are free to choose the topic of your project, the project structure is relatively rigid. In particular, throughout the project, you will have to submit seven deliverables (D1–D7, described below). The deliverables are designed to keep you on track and to give you feedback on your progress.

Deliverable Deadline
D1 Group contract 2024-01-26
D2 Project plan 2024-02-16
D3 Baseline system 2024-02-23
D4 Project abstract 2024-03-08
D5 Project presentation 2024-03-12
D6 Peer feedback 2024-03-15
D7 Post-project paper 2024-03-23

Time requirements

The project runs throughout the entire course, but most of the work is concentrated in the two project weeks (W9–W10). When you plan your time for the project, you should calculate approximately 56 hours per group member. Here is a suggested breakdown of this time into concrete tasks:

  • 8 hours for project preparations (before the project weeks)
  • 32 hours for the most intensive part of the work during the project weeks
  • 4 hours to participate in the course conference and provide peer feedback
  • 12 hours for the post-project paper

D1: Group contract

Your first task in the project is to form your project group. We encourage you to form groups that include students with diverse educational backgrounds, skills, and interests, as this can improve the quality of the project.

After formation, your group must make a group contract that will govern your collaboration. The contract should spell out the behaviours you expect of all group members and procedures for resolving impasses in the group.

Specific questions to think about for the group contract include the following:

  • What is our level of ambition for this project?
  • How will we communicate with each other?
  • How often and where will we meet?
  • How will we make sure that our meetings are productive?
  • What will we do if some member contributes significantly less than others?
  • What will we do if some member breaks any rule in this contract?

Instructions: Make a group contract and have it signed by all group members (physically or electronically). Include both the name and the LiU-ID of each group member. Submit the signed contract as a PDF document through Lisam.

D2: Project plan

During the first few weeks of the course, your group should meet regularly to plan and prepare the project. Towards the end of this phase, you must hand in a project plan with the following structure:

  • Background. What is this project about? What do we hope to learn from it?
  • Literature. What methods from the NLP literature do we want to implement and evaluate?
  • Tasks. Who in our group will do what and when?
  • Resources. What resources (e.g., data or compute) do we need for the project?

Your plan must contain at least 3 references to relevant research articles.

The maximal length for the project plan is 2 pages including references. You must use the ACL 2023 Style Files. You will use the same format for the post-project paper.

Instructions: Write a project plan per the specification above and submit it as a PDF document through Lisam.

Feedback: We advise you to get feedback on your project ideas from the examiner prior to submission of the written project plan. Book an appointment

D3: Baseline system

Before the main project work, you must implement and evaluate the baseline system for your project. If you are doing the standard project, this baseline is the tagger–parser pipeline. If you are doing a project on a self-proposed topic, the baseline is the implementation of whatever other method you will compare your work to.

Instructions: Make your baseline available to the examiner via a link to a repo on GitLab or GitHub. Note the specific requirements for the standard project.

D4: Project abstract

During the project weeks, you will extend or apply your baseline system according to your project plan. At the end of this phase, you must submit a one-paragraph project abstract. The abstract should summarise what you have done (which may be different from what you originally planned to do) and your main results. The main purpose of the abstract is to announce your presentation ahead of the course conference.

Instructions: Submit your project title, abstract and repo URL via this online form.

D5: Project presentation

In the week following the main project weeks, your group will present your project in connection at the course conference. The conference follows a hybrid format with some presentations given on campus and some asynchronously online. After the conference, you will give feedback on other groups’ projects.

For an on-campus presentation, you are allotted a 15-minute time slot: 10 minutes for your presentation and 5 minutes for questions. An asynchronous presentation consists of a 10-minute video about your project and an interactive session on Zoom where you answer questions.

You are free to choose the presentation’s content and structure. Remember that the presentation needs to be understandable to everybody in the course (not only the examiner).

In preparing your presentation, you may want to consider the following questions:

  • What have you done in this project? What method did you implement and evaluate?
  • Why have you chosen this particular project?
  • Which sources of scientific information did you use?
  • What are your experimental results?
  • What are your conclusions regarding the implemented method?

Instructions: For an on-campus presentation, prepare a presentation per the specification above. For an asynchronous presentation, record your group’s presentation as a 10-minute video (mp4 format) and share it with the examiner. Also, email the examiner a link to the Zoom room you will use for the interactive session.

Feedback: You will receive feedback on your project and your presentation from other students during and after the course conference; this feedback will be helpful to you when preparing your post-project paper. After the conference, the examiner will assess your presentation according to the Project rubric. This assessment will contribute to your grade for the project module.

D6: Peer feedback

Each of you will be assigned three other presentations to provide peer feedback on. Of course, you are welcome to attend/watch more presentations as well – have a look at the project abstracts and see what interests you!

After the conference, you will submit a feedback form for each of the three presentations you have been assigned. The form will contain the following questions/prompts:

  • What method from the NLP literature did the group implement?
  • What was the most interesting result in the project?
  • What was the group’s conclusion regarding the implemented method?
  • State one thing about the presentation that you really liked.
  • State one thing about the presentation that can be improved.
  • What new knowledge do you take away from the presentation?

Instructions: Submit your feedback forms, one form for each of the presentations assigned to you. Link to the feedback form

D7: Post-project paper

The final project-related assignment is an individual post-project paper. The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to take stock of what you have learned from the project.

We ask you to structure your paper into three parts as follows:

  • Describe your work with the project. Focus on things that let you illustrate what you have learned.
  • Examine your work and link it to the relevant course content.
  • Articulate your learning. What did you learn? How, exactly, did you learn it? Why does this learning matter?

You will encounter the same type of questions in the labs, which should give you a good starting point. For more tips on how to write a good reflection paper, see the following:

The maximal length for the project plan is 4 pages excluding references. You must use the ACL 2023 Style Files.

In addition to the paper itself, we ask you to also submit a self-assessment form. The information in this form will allow us to provide more relevant feedback, by focusing on aspects where our own assessment deviates from yours. The form also provides you with an opportunity to vet your paper against the assessment criteria.

Instructions: Write a paper according to the given specification and submit it as a PDF document through Lisam. Please also submit the self-assessment form.

Examination: The course teachers will assess your paper according to the criteria spelled out in the Guidelines for the post-project paper. This assessment will contribute to your grade for the project module.