Topic outline

  • Project work

    The project work is done in groups of 2 or 3 people. The workload is about 2 credits. You are free to choose the topic yourself. More specific instructions on topic selection and project goals will be given during the first lecture.

    There will be several deadlines to motivate you to work on the project throughout the whole duration of the course, and not just at the very end :-)

    The deadlines are for the: 

    1. Abstract
    2. Project Plan
    3. Literature survey
    4. Project Presentation video
    5. Final report

    The Project Plan and the Literature survey will be peer-graded by other students. The peer-grading will not influence the final project grade but will be considered in the overall course grade. Note that all group members submit a copy of the project plan and literature survey. The project grade itself is proposed by an evaluator working in the Aalto speech recognition research group and then is agreed upon by the course staff committee. The grade is based on the final report.

    Every group also needs to submit a 5-minute video presentation describing the project and its results. Every group needs to watch every other group video and give short pros/cons comments on it. Presentations are also considered to be a peer-grading activity. In addition, there will be a vote for the best presentation and the winner will get a prize (TBA).

    The tentative overall schedule for the project work is given below:

    • Project group forming: Complete the mandatory entrance survey to indicate your intentions and preferences regarding the project work. deadline 19 Jan midnight. Based on your answers, the groups will be formed by January 21 by the course staff. The survey opens on 01.01.2021.
    • Topic selection: submit a team abstract (one-paragraph description of the intended topic). Deadline 4 Feb
    • Project plan and Literature survey: Deadline 11 March (All group members submit a copy separately!)
    • Peer grading for the Project plan and the Literature survey: Deadline 18 March (All group members submit one peer-review!)
    • Reaction to peer grading: 25 March
    • Full project report: submission of the final report. See the details below. Deadline 29 April
    • Project Presentation video (5 min): Deadline 7 May
    • Vote for the best Project Presentation video: Deadline 21 May

    • Quiz icon
      Entrance survey Quiz
      Not available unless: You belong to survey

      This is a mandatory survey for participation in the course. 

      The course project teams will be formed based on these answers. The survey has questions about four areas:

      1. your current skills and background
      2. your preferences for teammates (if any)
      3. the amount of time and attention you are able to dedicate to the project
      4. your plans and hopes for the project
      Your answers will help us place you in a team that you'll be (hopefully) comfortable working in.

      The deadline is 19.01
      The groups will be formed by 21.01 by course assistants and you'll get notified.

      If you don't answer the survey, you'll be assigned to a project group randomly. 

    • Assignment icon
      Team abstract Assignment

      1. Include the name and the composition of your Team (names and email addresses).
      2. Write one paragraph on the more specific topic that you plan on addressing: briefly consider all the aspects of your project, including which approach you will use to evaluate your results. 

      You will receive short feedback on your abstract.


    • Workshop icon
      Literature survey and Project plan Workshop
      Not available unless: You belong to a group in project_work

      Submission instructions


      All group members submit a copy of their group's report.

      This is a peer-reviewed submission. All group members submit a PDF copy of their group's report by the deadline. Make the submission anonymous - don't write your group members' names in the document.

      After the submission deadline, all students get assigned a submission to peer-review. The assessment is anonymous and textual only - no grades are given. Though the peer-reviews are assigned to individual students, groups may work together and write each review as a group.

      After the peer-review phase is over, each student receives one peer-review (give one, get one, logically). Share the review comments with your group. This MyCourses unit ends at that point, but groups will still proceed to one more stage: review-reaction / rebuttal. This is not mandatory, but those groups that submit something get +1 activity point. The idea is to properly consider the peer-review you got, and tell how you will implement the advice you received. You should also clarify or elaborate on parts which the reviewers found confusing or lacking. Finally you may also explain if you disagree with some of the review comments. This rebuttal is only visible for course staff.

      Since the assignment is peer-reviewed, we cannot be flexible with the deadlines. Contact the TAs in case the schedule is the schedule is very problematic for you.


      Writing a literature review and project plan


      You can start the submission PDF with (an up-to-date version of) your team abstract, for context.

      Literature review

      The goal of the literature review is to get to know the topic of your project. The literature review should cover the broader topic (e.g. word embeddings spaces and analogies) and the specific methods that you plan to use (e.g. bag-of-words word2vec).

      Show what the practical or theoretical difficulties are in the broader problem. Show the general framework of how the problem is typically approached (sometimes it is relevant to briefly describe a couple of broad strategies). Show how results in this topic are typically evaluated. Show how the specific methods that you apply relate to the larger topic at hand. You may also find it interesting to briefly showcase some recent state of the art results.

      You should follow academic citation principles: back specific claims with specific citations. A typical length of a literature survey could be 2 pages: prioritize quality. Assume that your topic is totally new to your student peers, and for such an audience.

      Project plan

      After the literature review, write a less formal project plan: describe what you intend to do, with what data, and how you will evaluate. Again, write for your student peer audience, try to be clear and specific enough that they get a general idea of what you are going to do in practice.

      A good project plan should have some flexibility - have simpler goals, and more extended ideas that you can reach for if you have time.

    • Assignment icon
      Literature survey and Project plan - Rebuttal Assignment
      Not available unless: You belong to a group in project_work

      This is not mandatory, but those groups that submit something get +1 activity point. The idea is to properly consider the peer-review you got, and tell how you will implement the advice you received. You should also clarify or elaborate on parts which the reviewers found confusing or lacking. Finally you may also explain if you disagree with some of the review comments. This rebuttal is only visible for course staff.

    • Assignment icon
      Full project report Assignment
      Not available unless: You belong to a group in project_work

      The report should be structured as follows:

      • Title page: the course code and course name, student name(s) and ID(s), date, the topic of your project.
      • Introduction: Describe the research problem: You can think of it through answering questions like why is it a relevant or interesting problem? How can one approach it, in general? How are you approaching it in this work?
      • Methods: Describe the methods that you use in the work.
      • Experiments: What is the experimental setup? Give sufficient details on how the experiments were carried out, so that another person familiar with this course but not with this topic might replicate your experiments.
      • Results: Describe the results of your experiments. You may want to use tables to summarize results, or to show typical samples or particularly interesting cases.
      • Conclusions / Discussion: Based on your results, what conclusions can you draw regarding the question you set out to study?
      • Division of labor: In a group work, describe who did what.
      • Acknowledgments: Did you get help? Anyone you wish to particularly thank?
      • References: The bibliography that you utilized, and that you refer to in the text
      • Appendix: Your own program code, possible excerpts of data etc.


    • Assignment icon
      Project Video Assignment
      Not available unless: You belong to a group in project_work
      5 minute video summarizing your project
    • Questionnaire icon
      VOTE FOR THE BEST VIDEO Questionnaire
      Student must submit this questionnaire to complete it
    • URL icon
      PROJECT VIDEOS URL
      Not available unless: You belong to any group
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