General information about the course

• LIN 389C Research in Computational Linguistics. Unique number: 39400
  
• Fall 2019
  
• Meeting: Friday 12-3, Compling Lab, CLA 4.422, near the skybridge to SAC
• Course organizer: Erk.
  
• Office hours Tuesday/Thursday 2-3:30pm.
  
• Reach me at: katrin DOT erk AT utexas DOT edu
  
• Course schedule

Course Purpose

To teach about, encourage, and give students time for research. Also to encourage discussion and collaboration among students interested in the same subfield.

Course Organization

There are six constituencies who will not be treated exactly equally in the course because their needs are different:

• first-year students: need general context and help on first research projects and first-year papers
• second-year students: need feedback on the research they have done, prepare for further research, and write second-year papers
• third-year students: need to write their Qualifying Papers, write grant proposals
• post-candidacy pre-proposal students: need to write and present their dissertation proposals
• post-candidacy dissertation students: need to write dissertations, get feedback
• students from other departments: needs will vary

Course Components

The course consists of two main parts: a research seminar, and discussion of ongoing student research.

• Research seminar: This semester we focus on a recent papers in computational linguistics. Topics and readings will be given on the schedule page.
  Typically one of the students in the class will be responsible for giving a short initial summary of the paper and for preparing some questions to get the discussion going.
  
• Discussion of ongoing student research:
  
• Round-table: short presentations by all participants about their current research. This will happen almost every week.
  
• On-going research: longer presentations (30 minutes or an hour including discussion), students, faculty, auditors if they wish
• Dissertation proposal presentations
• Dissertation progress talks
• Practice talks for conference presentations

Topic list

Topics proposed by you, along with papers we could read about these topics.

Requirements

• First-year students: Attend all classes/activities. Talk about research.
  First semester, submit literature discussion sketch halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit literature discussion at end of semester.
  Second semester, submit first-year paper draft halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit first-year paper at end of semester.
  
• Second-year students: Attend all classes/activities. Talk about research.
  First semester, submit research discussion draft halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit research discussion paper at end of semester.
  Second semester, submit second-year paper draft halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit second-year paper at end of semester.
  
• Third-year students: Attend all classes/activities. Talk about research.
  First semester, submit QP proposal halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit QP progress report at end of semester.
  Second semester, submit QP draft halfway through the semester (see schedule), submit QP at end of semester.
  
• Post-candidacy, pre-proposal students: Attend all presentations. Talk about research.
  
• Dissertation-writing students: Attend all presentations, give at least one presentation during semester on doctoral research).
• Students from other departments: a course project, with 2 documents: intermediate report (2-3 pages), final report (8 pages), deadlines as given in the schedule.