Module 2 Overview

Theme

Embeddings and semantic similarity

Essential Question

How do vector representations support semantic operations?

Module Components

• Book prose: conceptual framing, domain scenario, methods, and failure modes

• Assignment: evidence-backed production of a specific artifact

• Slides: presentation sequence for seminar or lecture delivery

• Narration: spoken version of the slide flow

• Instructor notes: facilitation plan, discussion prompts, and grading cues

• Rubric: criteria for evaluating the module artifact

• Notebook: executable lab aligned with the module theme using synthetic support messages, retrieval snippets, intent labels, and factuality checks

Module Artifact

NLP evaluation packet with task framing, retrieval/evaluation design, and deployment guardrails focused on embeddings and semantic similarity: Build a simple semantic search over course documents.

Professional Setting

Students work as if advising a product team evaluating an NLP workflow before using it in customer-facing communication. Their work must be intelligible to product manager, support lead, privacy reviewer, and model evaluator.