How to Demonstrate Objectives

You can demonstrate any technical objectives through a chatbot conversation, a meeting with the instructor, or a project.

For context and implications objective demonstrations, you can use a reflection in a project or a discussion forum post. There are a few targeted forum posts, but the final forum post is an open-ended opportunity to demonstrate any of the remaining context and implications objectives. (You may make multiple posts to demonstrate multiple objectives.)

Here’s how to do each of the technical objective demonstrations:

Using a Chatbot Conversation

You can demonstrate that you’ve fulfilled a course objective by creating a screen recording of a chatbot conversation. Here’s the process:

  1. Decide which course objectives you want to demonstrate. (You can probably demonstrate more than one objective in a single chatbot conversation.)
  2. Gather some evidence that you’ll need to demonstrate the objective. This will generally be a part of a notebook that you’ve created for class and a screenshot or photo of a quiz question that you’ve answered, but you are welcome to use other evidence as well.
  3. Start a screen recording on your computer or phone.
  4. Open a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and start a conversation like the following:
I'm a student in an undergraduate AI course. The course focuses on core AI/ML concepts, with just enough math and implementation to make the concepts concrete. My prof has asked me to use a chatbot conversation to demonstrate that I've fulfilled a course objective. I'm going to provide some evidence in the form of work that I've done for the class. Please ask some questions to verify my understanding of the material and probe the limits of my understanding. Note:

- Stay within the main topics that we've covered for the course. If you're unsure if we covered a topic, ask about that before asking a question about it.
- Ask one or two questions at a time and wait for my response.
- If my answer is incomplete or incorrect, don't just tell me the right answer; ask me a follow-up question to help me get to the right answer on my own.

Remember that we're going to share the transcript of this conversation with my professor.

Here's the objectives that I'm trying to demonstrate, copy-pasted from the syllabus:

1. [Objective 1]
2. [Objective 2]
...

Here's my evidence:

[EVIDENCE BLOCK START]
[Notebook excerpt]
[Quiz question screenshot]
[EVIDENCE BLOCK END]

Here's how I think this evidence demonstrates that I've fulfilled the objectives:

...

Guidelines

  1. Speak your thoughts aloud as you type your responses to the chatbot. (Check your mic first.) You are also welcome to use a voice-based chatbot if you prefer, just test that the microphone recording works.

  2. Answer questions honestly. Don’t look up an answer or just guess; it’s ok to say “I’m not sure” or “please try asking that question in a different way.” If the chatbot asks about something that we didn’t emphasize in class, it’s ok to say “we didn’t focus on that in class, please ask me something else.”

  3. If you make a mistake, explain your mistake and correct it.

  4. When the conversation is complete, stop the screen recording and save the video file. If it’s big, use this preset in Handbrake to reduce the size, or use OneDrive.

  5. Submit the following to the dropbox on Moodle (name them according to the objective, so you can submit multiple times without overwriting):

    • The video file of the chatbot conversation (if it’s too big for Moodle, upload it to OneDrive and share the link with the instructor; also include the link on Moodle)
    • The transcript of the chatbot conversation as a text or Word document (copy and paste suffices, it doesn’t need to be pretty)
    • The evidence that you provided to the chatbot (can be included in the Word document above)
    • A brief reflection about the conversation:
      • Your best and worst moments in the conversation
      • The chatbot’s best and worst moments in the conversation
      • Any takeaways, e.g., things that you might want to review or look up later

Using a Meeting with the Instructor

You may also do a process much like the above, but through having a meeting with the instructor. For an instructor meeting demonstration, you can show that you met an objective by:

  1. Correctly explaining your reasoning on at least one related quiz question AND
  2. Being able to correctly answer one question I ask you about another piece of evidence of your choice (work on notebooks, discussion forum posts, etc.)

Logistics of instructor meetings:

  1. Send me in advance a brief write-up or video. Don’t make it perfect, just show me a rough picture of where you’re at. These should be your own work, even if you’re going to meet in a group (see below)
  2. Arrange a meeting time. You can keep it informal (e.g., ask me during a studio meeting, or drop by my office if my door happens to be open), but you’re welcome to schedule a meeting time if you prefer–but if so, ideally you’d show more than one objective at a time.

Instructor meetings can be in groups if you’re comfortable with that. Each student can explain one part of the concept. Each student should expect a follow-up question, which might relate to a different student’s explanation.

I will privately give you binary feedback: either you have “Completed” the objective or “Not Yet”. You are encouraged to reattempt as many times as desired (but with at least a day in between attempts). I will do my best to be available for meetings, but I cannot promise any specific availability, so please don’t get behind on demonstrating objectives.

Using a Project

For a project objective, you’ll include a reflection in the project that describes how your work on the project demonstrates your competency in that objective. Think of this as preparation for discussing the project in a technical interview.

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