CS357: Foundations of Artificial Intelligence - Preparing for Each Class and How Participation Works (0 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To arrive at each hands-on session ready to build, run, and discuss
  2. To prepare technical activities and readings so the session starts from your attempt
  3. To understand how class activities and participation are evaluated
  4. To know the many valid ways of contributing, including engaging with classmates' work

The Assignment

This course is about building and operating agents you actually understand, and that work happens in class. Our meetings are hands-on POGIL sessions in which your team works through activities that develop both the concepts and the running systems — so class rewards arriving ready far more than arriving early. “Ready” is not a matter of talent; it is a short routine you can run before every meeting, and this page is that routine, together with a clear account of how the daily work of participating is valued.

Purpose

Two things make a working session productive: that you come having engaged the material, and that you come with something specific to do with it — a question, a stuck point, a thing you tried to run that did not behave. This guide gives you a repeatable way to prepare, a set of moves for when something will not work, and a transparent picture of how participation is assessed, so the grade rewards preparation and genuine engagement rather than the volume of your voice.

How Class Activities and Participation Are Evaluated

Your participation grade (10% of the course) is assessed holistically across the term against four dimensions. You see this rubric before the fact, so there are no surprises.

Dimension Pre-Emerging Beginning Progressing Proficient
Preparation Arrives without having read or attempted the activity Has skimmed but attempted nothing Has read and attempted the reading response or setup Arrives having prepared, with a specific question or a stuck point to raise
Contribution Disengaged from the team and the room Participates only when prompted Engages actively in the activity and discussion Advances the group — proposes an approach, catches a failure mode, or asks the unblocking question
Collaboration Works alone or lets the team carry the work Does the assigned role minimally Takes the rotating role and peer review seriously Makes others better: explains, gives sharp SQR feedback, engages a classmate’s Reading Group source in earnest
Reflection Skips the reflection prompts Reflections are perfunctory Reflections engage the ideas honestly Reflections connect technical and ethical threads and name genuine uncertainty

A Routine for Preparing

Run this before each meeting. It turns the assigned activity into readiness, and it pairs with each activity’s own “Before You Begin” box.

  1. Survey first (5 minutes). Skim the day’s activity and reading: the headings, the “Key Concepts” table, the models, the code cells, and the exercises. Know what the session will ask you to do before you read for detail.
  2. Read slowly, and run what you can. When the activity shows a command, a config, or a snippet, run it — on your own machine or the class stack. A pipeline you have only read about is not one you can yet debug. Much of this course is about operating your own system; the preparation is where that fluency is built.
  3. Attempt the reading response or setup beforehand. Where a session has a reading response or a setup step, do it first. You are not expected to have it all working; you are expected to arrive with an attempt, because that is what makes the in-class work land.
  4. Bring one question or one stuck point. Mark the single thing that resisted you — a container that would not start, a retrieval that returned nonsense, an argument you could not evaluate — and bring it. That is the accountability check that the preparation happened, and it is usually where the day’s best discussion begins.

Ways to Contribute

Speaking up in whole-class discussion is one way to participate, and a good one. It is not the only one, and this component values several:

  • Work the activity — engage in your POGIL team; the daily learning happens here.
  • Take your role — Manager, Recorder, Presenter, or Reflector are each real contributions.
  • Engage a classmate’s Reading Group — when a peer leads a discussion, coming with the source read and a question ready is participation that makes their session — and your grade — better.
  • Give good peer review — a sharp SQR card (one Strength with evidence, one Question, one Risk with a mitigation) for another team is among the most valuable things you can offer.
  • Post and ask — posting your team’s answer to the discussion board, or asking a precise question about a failure mode, moves the whole room forward.

Being confused is part of learning this material — it is never something to hide. If the spoken room is consistently hard for you, the written and role-based channels above are genuine ways to earn this component; talk with me early and we will find the path that fits.

Self-Assessment (Midterm and End of Term)

At midterm and at the end of the term, write a short self-assessment (a paragraph or two) against the four dimensions:

  1. Preparation and reflection: How reliably have you arrived prepared? What does your Reflection Notebook show?
  2. Contribution and collaboration: Name one session you helped move forward, one teammate you helped, and one classmate’s Reading Group you engaged well.
  3. A goal: One concrete thing you will do differently in the second half of the term.

Your own account of your growth is part of this grade, and the self-assessment is where we reconcile your sense of it with mine.

See also

Submission

Nothing to submit. This is a support page; return to it before class throughout the term.

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.