Every piece of graded work in the course, what it is worth, and when it is due.
Assessment#
Three individual projects, worth 20%, 50%, and 30%, together making up the full 100% of the course mark. Each project page carries its own brief, rubric, resources, and submission panel.
Project 1 — Build a Narrative Base Model
Train a decoder-only language model from scratch that can continue an incomplete story with recognisably narrative language.
Due 21 March 2027 · Weight: 20%
Project 2 — Give the Model a Voice
Post-train the frozen Project 1 checkpoint to produce stories with a recognisable target narrative style, and prove the change without hiding a regression.
Due 25 April 2027 · Weight: 50%
Project 3 — Build a Specialist
Choose Track A (narrative specialisation) or Track B (arithmetic reasoning), fine-tune an appropriate starting checkpoint, and demonstrate the acquired behaviour through controlled evaluation.
Due 23 May 2027 · Weight: 30%
All three projects share one marking mechanism for the submitted-model component: the same public evaluation layers, prohibited uses, separation validator, perplexity formula, and human-evaluation process. See the Evaluation Protocol for the complete rules.