Admission requirements
This course requires some experience with coding as a prior requirement. Familiarity with Python is recommended.
Description
Collaborative and Multimodal Interaction (CMI) focuses on how people interact with and through computers with an emphasis on AI. This includes conversational agents, language models, multimodal interaction, AI-assisted creativity, and the social and ethical implications of Human-AI collaboration. Recent advances in AI have fundamentally changed the way people communicate, create, and collaborate, raising new questions about the design, evaluation, and impact of interactive systems. This course addresses those questions through direct engagement with current research.
The course is structured in two phases. In the first phase, students develop a foundation in research methods and engage in weekly seminars in which teams present and critically discuss recent papers from the field. In the second phase, students apply this foundation by designing, building, and evaluating an original interactive system, part of the final project.
Course objectives
Understand the landscape of generative and multimodal AI systems
Critically read and build on recent HCI / AI research (e.g., CHI)
Design, prototype, and evaluate a collaborative or multimodal AI application
Develop skills in peer critique, collaborative working, and research communication
Reflect on ethical dimensions: trust, bias, wellbeing, and societal impact
Schedule
In MyTimetable; you can find all course and programme schedules; allowing you to create your personal timetable. Activities for which you have enrolled via MyStudyMap will automatically appear in your timetable.
Additionally; you can easily link MyTimetable to a calendar app on your phone; and schedule changes will be automatically updated in your calendar. You can also choose to receive email notifications about schedule changes. You can enable notifications in Settings after logging in.
Questions? Watch the video; read the instructions; or contact the ISSC helpdesk.
Note: Joint Degree students from Leiden/Delft need to combine information from both the Leiden and Delft MyTimetables to see a complete schedule. This video explains how to do it.
Teaching method
Lectures, research seminars, Online and in-class discussions, background reading, project, and final presentations.
Assesment method
Seminar presentation (20%)
Discussion points (20%)
Project (60%)
Seminar presentation (20%). Students select and present one research paper during the seminar phase (weeks 4–8), leading the group discussion that follows. A grade of 5.5 or higher is required to pass the course. If not presented, the grade is 0. A re-sit opportunity is available in the form of a written discussion paper on a selected research paper; the maximum grade for a re-sit is 6.0. Students are required to attend at least 4 out of 5 sessions.
Discussion points (20%). This component consists of participation in the online discussion forum during certain weeks, linked to the seminar topics. All submissions are required. One missed forum submission is permitted; this will be treated as the resit opportunity for this component. Submissions must demonstrate substantive engagement with the course material. Superficial contributions will be treated as non-submissions.
Project (60%). In teams, students design, implement, and evaluate an interactive system. A grade of 5.5 or higher is required to pass the course. Students who fail the final project have a re-sit opportunity within a specified time frame. The maximum grade for the re-sit is 6.
Passing requirements. To pass the course, all of the following must be met:
The seminar presentation must be graded 5.5 or higher.
The project must be graded 5.5 or higher.
All requirements of the discussion component must be met.
At least 4 out of 5 seminar sessions must be attended. Missing more than one session results in failing the course.
Resit, review & feedback
For the seminar presentation, a re-sit opportunity is available in the form of a written discussion paper on a selected research paper; the maximum grade for a re-sit is 6.0.
For the discussion points, one missed forum submission is permitted; this will be treated as the resit opportunity for this component.
For the project, students who fail the final project have a re-sit opportunity within a specified time frame. The maximum grade for the re-sit is 6.
Reading list
The majority of the course literature comes from the proceedings of the CHI conference (freely available online).
For a few lectures, additional material will be made available through Brightspace.
Registration
As a student; you are responsible for enrolling on time through MyStudyMap.
In this short video; you can see step-by-step how to enrol for courses in MyStudyMap.
Extensive information about the operation of MyStudyMap can be found here.
There are two enrolment periods per year:
Enrolment for the fall opens in July
Enrolment for the spring opens in December
See this page for more information about deadlines and enrolling for courses and exams.
Note:
It is mandatory to enrol for all activities of a course that you are going to follow.
Your enrolment is only complete when you submit your course planning in the ‘Ready for enrolment’ tab by clicking ‘Send’.
Not being enrolled for an exam/resit means that you are not allowed to participate in the exam/resit.
Contact
Contact the lecturer (f.m.plaza.del.arco@liacs.leidenuniv.nl) for course specific questions and the programme coordinator for questions regarding the programme, admission and/or registration.
Remarks
Elective; external and exchange Master students (other than Creative Intelligence and Technology and Computer Science master students) need to be admitted to the course before registration due to limited capacity. Contact the programme's coordinator to request admission, include a short description of your course interest, your understanding of the course in your own words; and state your current study programme in your correspondence.
Transitional arrangement
Human Computer Interaction and Information Visualisation is replaced by Collaborative and Multimodal Interaction (4383COMUI). Students who have completed the former cannot take the latter; students who have not yet completed the former should take the latter instead.
Software
The Faculty of Science uses the software distribution platform Academic Software. Through this platform; you can access the software needed for specific courses in your studies. For some software, your laptop must meet certain system requirements, which will be specified with the software. It is important to install the software before the start of the course. More information about the laptop requirements can be found on the student website.