Each student will be required to give one oral research paper presentation. A list of papers to be presented is given here. Students will be asked to rank the papers they prefer to present, and then will be assigned papers to present on specified dates. Each class will consist of two such paper presentations. These presentations will be given Jan. 27 thru Mar 24.
A paper presentation should be a 20-minute slide-driven oral presentation, followed by 15 minutes of class discussion led by the presenter(s). The presentation should first summarize the content of the paper, clearly presenting: 1) What problem or task does the paper study? 2) What is the motivation for this problem/task, i.e. why is it important? 3) What is the novel algorithm/approach to this problem that the paper proposes? 4) How is this method evaluated, i.e. what is the experimental methodology, what data is utilized, and what performance metrics are used? 5) What are the basic results and conclusions of the paper? Finally, the presentation should conclude with the presenter's critique of the paper including: 1) Are the any reasons to question the motivation and importance of the problem studied? 2) Are there any limitations/weaknesses to the proposed approach to this problem? 3) Are their any limitations/weaknesses to the evaluation methodology and/or results? 4) What are some promising future research directions following up on this work?
At the end of every week (by midnight Friday), each student should submit a "weekly paper critique" on Canvas. Pick one of the papers discussed in class during the week and write a 1/2 page critique of the paper. Use the critique questions listed above for the oral presentations to guide your discussion, but there is no need to address all of these questions in a given critique. Submit a nicely formated 10pt font PDF. If you presented one of the papers during the week, choose another paper you did not present for your weekly critique. Critques will be given one of 4 possible grades: Not submitted (0%), OK (70%), good (90%), or excellent (100%).
The final project can be a more ambitious experiment or enhancement involving an existing GNLP system or a new system implementation (in the programming language of your choice). Ideally, the final project report should be appropriate for submission to a conference relevant to GNLP.
The very strong preference is for team final projects with pairs of 2 students; however, projects done by 1 or 3 students are possible on rare ocassions with prior approval of the instructor. Each student is responsible for finding a project partner for the final project. Feel free to post a message to Piazza about your interests in order to find a partner with similar interests.
Submit a one-page project proposal by Mar. 14 that briefly covers the first 4 questions for research paper presentations (see above). I will provide feedback on these proposals, but they will not be graded. Students are encouraged to discuss project proposals with me in office hours before submitting them.
During the last five classes of the semester (Apr. 14-28), each team will be required to give a 15 minute presentation on the current state of their project, and lead a 10 minute discussion of their project. This will allow for 3 project presentations per class. Use the same format as for the research paper presentations, sharing the presentation, but you may have only preliminary (if any) actual results at that time to present and there is no need for a critique.
Final project reports are due on Canvas on midnight May 2. They should be formatted to meet the requirements of a long paper submission to the EMNLP conference as described in the call for papers. An outline for the project report is available here. One of the projects from last year was revised, submitted and accepted at Speech and Language Technologies 2024 and the published version is here. One of the projects 5 years ago was revised, submitted, and accepted at the AACL (Asian ACL) conference and the published version can be viewed here. One of the projects from 3 years ago was revised and accepted at a workshop as a paper available here. One of the projects from 2 years ago was revised and accepted at a workshop as a paper avaliable here.
No late submissions of paper questions, weekly paper critiques, or final projects will be accepted. Please turn in all assignments on time.
Read the department's academic policy page. Students who demonstrably violate the Academic Honesty policy will receive a failing grade in the class. Any ideas, text, figures, or slides that you get from another source should be clearly acknowledged and properly cited. Otherwise, any remaining material in your presentations, reports, and papers should be your own.
22% Research Paper Presentation 8% Class Attendance 12% Daily Paper Questions 12% Weekly Paper Critiques 14% Final Project Presentation 32% Final Project Report