Week 7 Schedule and Activities
In Week 7, you will:
- Explore reinforcement learning through two concrete optimization
techniques — hill climbing and genetic algorithms — and
understand why one gets stuck where the other keeps going.
- Study unsupervised learning: how AI systems find structure in data
without being told what to look for, and where this kind of learning
already operates quietly in systems you use every day.
- Arrive, finally, at large language models — understanding what
ChatGPT, Claude, and similar tools actually are, how they work, what
they are genuinely good at, and where they fail in ways that matter
for educators.
- Reflect on the full two-week AI arc through Social and Ethical
Considerations and Teaching and Learning Perspectives.
- Complete the AI Post-Reflection, returning to what you believed about
AI at the start of Week 6 and capturing how your thinking has changed.
The schedule below is a suggested pacing guide. Feel free to adjust based on
your own calendar, but try to keep the order of activities so later pieces
build on earlier ones.
Week 7 is not assessed on a Competency Demo. The topics
this week are important for your development as a CS educator, but the
formal assessment for the AI unit was CD #6 at the end of Week 6. Engage
with the material here because it matters — not because it will be
tested.
Computer Science Content
(Monday – Wednesday)
-
Topic 7a – Reinforcement Learning: Hill Climbing and Genetic Algorithms
Go deep on reinforcement learning through two concrete techniques.
Work through hill climbing and genetic algorithms — each with
a different strategy for searching a solution space and improving
over time — and understand why one gets stuck where the other
keeps going.
-
Topic 7b – Unsupervised Learning and Pattern Discovery
Study the third major category of machine learning: systems that
find structure in data without any labeled examples or predefined
categories. Understand clustering and where unsupervised learning
already operates quietly in recommendation systems, medical imaging,
and data mining.
-
Topic 7c – Large Language Models
Understand what ChatGPT, Claude, and similar tools actually are:
how they are trained, what they are doing when they generate text,
why they sometimes produce confident nonsense, and what that means
for a teacher deciding when and how to use them. This topic is
intentionally placed last — everything before it is context
for understanding it clearly.
Beyond the Content
(Thursday – Friday)
The Social, Ethical, and Teaching perspectives for the Week 7 content
are here, covering reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and
large language models. You now have the complete two-week picture, which
makes for a richer and more honest conversation.
-
Social and Ethical Considerations
Examine scenarios connecting AI — from reward misalignment in
recommendation systems to hallucination in AI grading tools to the
broader question of what automation means for the future of work and
what we teach students to prepare for it.
-
Teaching and Learning Perspectives
Reflect on how reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and
LLMs translate to your classroom. What misconceptions do students
at each grade level bring? And what does it mean to teach students
to use AI tools wisely rather than uncritically?
Small Group Discussion
(Thursday – Friday)
You will meet with your small group to make sense of both AI weeks
together. This is a synthesis conversation — what patterns do
you see across the full AI arc, what surprised you, and what feels
most relevant to your teaching context?
Week 7 Small Group Discussion Instructions
AI Post-Reflection
(Thursday – Saturday)
At the start of Week 6, you wrote down what you believed about
artificial intelligence before the readings shaped your thinking.
It is time to go back and read what you wrote.
The AI Post-Reflection asks you to revisit those responses and
reflect on how two weeks of study have shifted — or
complicated, or confirmed — your thinking. This is the second
half of an activity that started on the first day of Week 6.
Complete the AI Post-Reflection →
Submit your responses on Blackboard by end of day Saturday, August 2.
CD #6 retakes, if needed, are also due by August 6.