Group Project

Teams of three post-train a model for a task of their choosing. It's a semester-long thread that runs alongside the weekly homework.

Overview

A semester-long project in which your team chooses a real task, builds a credible baseline and evaluation suite, and conducts a scoped post-training experiment. A negative result that is well evaluated and carefully argued can still be a successful project. The final report should incorporate feedback received during the project presentation.

Milestones

MilestoneWeightDueDeliverable
Proposal 5% Sep 23 One-page project brief covering the task rationale, baseline and data plan, and initial evaluation design
Project checkpoint 5% Oct 28 5-minute oral progress update followed by two minutes of questions, supported by one structured checkpoint slide
Final presentation 10% Nov 18 In-class presentation with feedback for final revision
Revised final report and code 25% Dec 7 Written report incorporating presentation feedback and a reproducible code repository

Collaboration

The project is group work; all members are expected to contribute substantively, and the final report includes a short statement of individual contributions. Homework, by contrast, is individual work; see Assignments.

Choosing Your Task

Team formation happens during the Week 2 lab (Sep 2), and the choice of task and domain is one your team must make yourselves. See the AI use table on the Policies page for what generative AI tools may and may not be used for in the project.