CSCA 5842: Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing

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  • Course Type: Elective
  • Specialization: Natural Language Processing: Deep Learning Meets Linguistics
  • Instructors:ÌýDr. Katharina von der Wense
  • Prior knowledge needed: Students should consider their background in Java and begin appropriate tutorial study at a level needed to allow use of the language in course projects (suggested resources are provided).

Course Description

Deep learning has revolutionized the field of natural language processing and led to many state-of-the-art results. This course introduces students to neural network models and training algorithms frequently used in natural language processing. At the end of this course, learners will be able to explain and implement feedforward networks, recurrent neural networks, and transformers. They will also have an understanding of transfer learning and the inner workings of large language models.

Learning Outcomes

  • Design, implement, and evaluate a computing-based solution to meet a given set of computing requirements in the context of the program’s discipline.
  • Communicate effectively in a variety of professional contexts.

Course Grading Policy

AssignmentPercentage of Grade
4 Auto-Graded Quizzes20% (5% each)
4 Programming Assignments60% (15% each)
Final Exam20%

Course Content

Duration: 4Ìýhours, 51 minutes

This first week introduces the fundamental concepts of feedforward and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), focusing on their architectures, mathematical foundations, and applications in natural language processing (NLP). We'll will begin with an exploration of feedforward networks and their role in sentence embeddings and sentiment analysis. We then progresses to RNNs, covering sequence modeling techniques such as LSTMs, GRUs, and bidirectional RNNs, along with their implementation in Python. Finally, you will examine training techniques, gaining hands-on experience in optimizing neural language models.

Duration: 2 hours, 41 minutes

This week we'll explore sequence-to-sequence models in natural language processing (NLP), beginning with recurrent neural network (RNN)-based architectures and the introduction of attention mechanisms for improved alignment in tasks like machine translation. The module also covers best practices for training neural networks, including regularization, optimization strategies, and efficient model training. At the end of the week, you will gain practical experience in implementing and training sequence-to-sequence models.

Duration: 3Ìýhours, 16 minutes

This week explores transfer learning techniques in NLP, focusing on pretraining, finetuning, and multilingual models. You will first examine the role of pretrained language models like GPT, GPT-2, and BERT, and their challenges. We then explore multitask training and data augmentation, highlighting strategies like parameter sharing and loss weighting to improve model generalization across tasks. Finally, you will dive into crosslingual transfer learning, exploring methods like translate-train vs. translate-test, as well as zero-shot, one-shot, and few-shot learning for multilingual NLP.Ìý

Duration: 2 hours, 40 minutes

This final week introduces large language models (LLMs) and how they can be effectively used through techniques like prompt engineering, in-context learning, and parameter-efficient finetuning. You will explore language-and-vision models, understanding how multimodal architectures extend beyond text to integrate visual and other data modalities. We will also examine non-functional properties of LLMs, including challenges such as hallucinations, fairness, resource efficiency, privacy, and interpretability.Ìý

Duration: 1Ìýhours, 12 minutes

This module contains materials for the final exam. If you've upgraded to the for-credit version of this course, please make sure you review the additional for-credit materials in the Introductory module and anywhere else they may be found.

Notes

  • Page Updates: This page is periodically updated. Course information on the Coursera platform supersedes the information on this page. Click theÌýView on CourseraÌýbuttonÌýabove for the most up-to-date information.