Stanford CS 293 / EDUC 473 | Empowering Educators via Language Technology

Welcome!

Language is central to educational interactions; analyzing it can serve as a way to discover, measure, and facilitate the use of high-leverage teaching practices. Automating linguistic analysis via natural language processing (NLP) can enable tools that support educators. Such tools can provide educators with feedback on their classroom instruction, help them craft lesson plans, facilitate formative assessment, scale their support for students, among many other applications. This course offers the opportunity to understand the possibilities and the limitations of using NLP to support instruction. The course will cover topics including principles of computational social science research, ethics, bias and fairness in using NLP for education, translating expert measurement into automated scoring, large language models for education, among others. The course is centered on engaging with relevant papers and working towards a final project. The final project will allow you to dive deeper into a research question in this area, approach it from a critical social scientific lens and learn and apply NLP methods to address the question. At the end of the course, you will pitch your projects to a jury of educators!

CS293 classes will be a mix of lectures followed by discussion sessions led by students during our class meetings.

Overview

Course Info

• Class time: Lathrop 190, Monday/Wednesday 3-4:20 Pacific Time.
• Contact: Students should ask all course-related questions in the Ed Discussion Forum, where you will also find announcements. For personal matters that you don't wish to put in a private post, you can email both of us at ddemszky@stanford.edu and mxtan@stanford.edu.

Office Hours

• Mei Tan: Mondays and Wednesdays between 4:20-5:20 (right after class) in the classroom
• Dora Demszky: Mondays between 9:30-11am (Zoom). You can book 15 minutes (for project ideas, other brief questions) or 30 minutes (project-related conversations, other questions requiring more time).

Prerequisites

• Python programming experience and completion of CS124 (or equivalent introductory NLP class in Python) is required. Students from all departments are welcome.

Academic Accommodations

• From Stanford's Office of Accessible Education:Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066, URL: http://oae.stanford.edu).

• If you need an academic accommodation based on a disability, you should initiate the request with the OAE before the end of the second week of classes.

Well-Being, Stress Management, & Mental Health

• If you are experiencing personal, academic, or relationship problems and would like someone to talk to, reach out to the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) on campus. CAPS is the university’s counseling center dedicated to student mental health and wellbeing. Phone assessment appointments can be made at CAPS by calling 650-723- 3785, or by accessing the VadenPatient portal through the Vaden website. For more information, visit: https://vaden.stanford.edu/caps-and-wellness.