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USC CSCI 444 Fall 2025

CSCI 444 Fall 2025: NLP

🍂 Fall 2025     ⏰ Mon / Wed 10:00 - 11:50a     📍 WPH 106

Instructor: Swabha Swayamdipta

swabhas@usc.edu

Office Hours: Monday 9-9:45am, GCS LL2 SB5

Announcements

See Brightspace.

Summary

This class is all about language models: the fundamentals, spanning from simple architectures to modern Transformer-based neural architectures underlying large language models.

Calendar + Syllabus

Week Date Class Topics Readings Work Due
1 Aug 25 Course Overview and n-grams J&M, Chap 3
Aug 27 n-gram Models contd. J&M, Chap 3
2 Sep 1 Labor Day HW1 Released
Sep 3 Logistic Regression J&M, Chap 4
3 Sep 8 Project Pitches Quiz 1;
Sep 10 Word Embeddings J&M, Chap 5
4 Sep 15 word2vec J&M, Chap 5 Additional: word2vec Explained Group Formation Deadline;
Sep 17 Feedforward Nets J&M, Chap 6 HW1 Due; HW2 Release
5 Sep 22 Backpropagation and Recurrent Neural Networks J&M, Chap 6, 13 Quiz 2;
Sep 24 Seq2Seq and Attention J&M, Chap 8 Project Proposal Due;
6 Sep 29 Transformers - Building Blocks J&M, Chap 9
Oct 1 Transformers (contd.) J&M, Chap 9 Quiz 3; Mid-Semester Evaluation
7 Oct 6 PyTorch for Transformers (Lecture by Johnny Wei) HW2 Due; HW3 Release
Oct 8 Fall Break
8 Oct 13 Pre-training and Finetuning Transformers J&M, Chaps 10, 11 Quiz 4;
Oct 15 Tokenization and Generating from LMs J&M, Chaps 2.5, 13
9 Oct 20 Flipped Classroom - Project Discussions HW3 Due
Oct 22 Pre-Training J&M, Chaps 10, 12
10 Oct 27 Pre-Training contd. J&M, Chaps 10, 12
Oct 29 Post-Training J&M, Chaps 12 Project Status Report Due;
11 Nov 3 Preference Tuning J&M, Chaps 12 Quiz 5;
Nov 5 Evaluating Language Models
12 Nov 10 Paper Presentations I
Nov 12 Paper Presentations II
13 Nov 17 Responsible Language Modeling
Nov 19 Advanced Topics
14 Nov 24 Outro
Nov 26 Thanksgiving
15 Dec 1 Project Presentations I
Dec 3 Project Presentations II
16 Dec 8 Study Week
Dec 10 Study Week
17 Dec 15 Project Final Report due by 10:00am;

This calendar is subject to change. More details, e.g. lecture slides will be added as the semester continues. All work (except the project final report) is due on the specified date by 11:59 PM PT. See the syllabus for more details.

Assignments and Grading

There will be three components to course grades:

  • Homeworks (15%).
    • 5% X 3: There will be three coding homework assignments based on the topics of the class.
  • Quizzes (15%).
    • 3% X 5: Multiple-Choice Questions and Short Answers. Missed quizzes will receive a zero grade, and there will be no make-up quizzes.
  • Class Projects (55%).
    • Each student will do a group class project based on the topics covered in the class. Students will propose their own project, do the research and build a proof-of-concept, create a video demonstration of the proof-of-concept, and present the project in their report.
    • Pitch: 5%
    • Proposal: 10%
    • Status Reports: 10%
    • Project Presentation: 15%
    • Final Write-up: 15%
  • Paper Presentations (10%).
    • The project teams will present a scientific publication related to their project to the class.
    • All members of the team are expected to identify the central points of the research, and present that research to the class, as well as answer questions from the instructor, TAs and fellow students.
  • Class Participation (5%)
    • Each student’s engagements in course discussions during class and during project discussions.

Grading inquiries and questions about the grading of the homeworks and the quizzes can be asked (to the instructor) within one week from the grading date (the date the grades are released). Grades will be available within 2-2.5 weeks after submission.

All written assignments related to the final project should use the standard *ACL paper submission template.

Late Days

Students are allowed a maximum of 6 late days total for all assignments (but NOT the quizzes or presentations). You may use up to 3 late days per assignment. Using one late day for a project assignment involves each of the teammates using a late day each. Partial late days are not permitted. For every extra late day beyond the allowed late days, the student / team will lose 20% of the grade for the assignment.

Note: Please familiarize yourself with the academic policies and read the note about student well-being.

Pre-Requisites

Students are required to have taken

  • CSCI 170 and
  • 1 from (CSCI 104 or CSCI 114) and
  • 1 from (MATH 225 or EE 141) and
  • 1 from (EE 364 or MATH 407 or BUAD 310 or ISE 225) Recommended Preparation: Fluency with Python programming on the level of ITP 216 or TAC 216

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