Mondays and Wednesdays, 2 PM to 3:20 PM
Location: 200 Deschutes
CRN: 35745, Credits: 4
Web: http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/classes/08S/cis677
Anthony
Hornof
Associate Professor, 356 Deschutes
hornof@cs.uoregon.edu
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 4-5 PM, or by appointment
The point of the course is to learn the ACT-R cognitive architecture. ACT-R (adaptive control of thought, rational) is a computational framework for building models of human performance and human behavior for a wide variety of task domains. ACT-R simulates human perception, attention, learning, memory, problem-solving, decision-making, and language processing. Students in this class will learn (a) the rich psychological theory of ACT-R, (b) how to build models in ACT-R, and (c) how to run and evaluate models created by other researchers. The class is interesting for many reasons, including (a) ACT-R can be used to predict and explain user performance in human-computer interaction tasks, (b) ACT-R is perhaps the most-advanced unified theory of cognition, and (c) ACT-R represents an intriguing example of how computer science can be applied to build theory in other fields by means of detailed computational modeling and simulation.
This course has a prerequisite of CIS 471/571 but this can be waived by the instructor, such as for students from Psychology. Please discuss with the instructor if you would like to request such a waiver.
There will be a number of assignments, primarily based on the ACT-R tutorial at ACT-R.com, worth roughly 80% of the grade. There will be a final exam worth roughly 20% of the grade.
Please schedule other events such as trips or job interviews to avoid conflicts with the exam date(s).
Assignments are due at the start of the class period. Late assignments will be accepted up to two calendar days past the due date, but penalized 10% per day.
Students are expected to attend class, actively engage in discussions, and take notes.
Please send email from you uoregon email account and make sure that your name is clearly visible in the "From:" header. This is so that your email can be distinguished from spam. Course announcements will be sent to your uoregon email addresses.
If you have a documented disability and anticipate needing accommodations in this course, please make arrangements to meet with me in the first two weeks of class. Please request that the counselor for students with disabilities send me a letter verifying your disability.
Misrepresenting someone else's work or ideas as your own work, or in any way contributing to such a misrepresentation, will be taken very seriously. Clearly indicate all of the resources (beyond your own brainpower) that you use for the assignments.
A.Hornof 3/30/08