Hi there. I've always been interested in Deep Learning but never had enough motivation to take to work through the seminal readings or popular textbooks. I have a decent background in NLP, so Stanford's CS224d class seemed like the ideal way to finally get into deep learning. All the video lectures, notes and assignments are available online. There's even a /r/CS224d reddit community discussing the material.
But studying alone is not fun, right? What am I gonna do when I'm stuck? What about the projects? And how do I check if my solutions are correct? So I decided that I want to run an experiment: I want to re-create the cs224d class experience in Slack. We will follow the same weekly schedule, have the same assignments, and divide people into project groups.
Dropout rates for self-paces MOOCs are as high as 95%. The reason is that there is no (social or economical) cost associated with dropping out. Due to the large number of people each individual is essentially anonymous. In order to stay motivated and follow-through students need a forcing function. When everyone else in the class knows your real name and you have responsibility within your project groups it becomes harder to skip assignments or drop out. That's the idea behind the Slack course.
Details will be disucussed in Slack, but in short:
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Lectures: You need to watch two video lectures per week, just like the Stanford class. Readings are optional but encouraged. Questions are discussed in Slack. We'll have channels for each lecture and its readings.
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Assignments: Assignment have due dates and must be submitted online. Group work is encouraged, but you must write down your own solutions and list your collaborators (that's also the policy at Stanford). We'll have channels to discuss the assignments. I'll work on getting my hands on the official solutions.
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Project: People are divided into project groups based on time zone or preferred work time. Project works the same way they do in the Stanford class. Project proposals and milestone are submitted online.
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Grading: TBD.
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Instructors: There's no "official" instructor. We'll rely on our collective knowledge.
This is an experiment and I want to keep the class small and managable. I want veryone to know each other. I'm hoping to get 20-30 people interested. The Stanford course is 4 units, which "officially" translates to 12 hours of work per week. Depending on your background knowledge expect to spend 10-20 hours per week on lectures, papers, asssignments and project.
Fill out the form at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rMp0tFwVbxu6MDG7K9ywH1BNS2CSP9lROOpSins9EnE/viewform
Is this still active? (i guess not)