Assignments — CSIC30216 Fall 2026

Three individual assignments across the semester, plus the reflection essay, peer evaluation, and check-in surveys. The assignments form a deliberate arc: use techniques (A1) → design and verify a system (A2) → demonstrate growth with evidence (A3).

Every assignment that involves AI interactions requires including the actual prompt and output verbatim — not a summary or description. The prompt engineering log you maintain throughout the semester is the primary source for this material.

Assignment 1: Technique Practice and Prompt Diagnosis

10% · Due: Week 5 — Oct 5, start of class

This assignment consists of two parts: practicing multiple prompting techniques to generate codes, and diagnose and rewrite "broken" prompts. The core question to address through finishing this assignment is: "can you use prompting techniques on purpose, and can you recognise when they are failing?"

Assignment 2: Prompt System Design and Test Suite

15% · Due: Week 11 — Nov 16, start of class

This two-part assignment requires you to design a complete prompt system for several engineering scenarios, and build test suites, resolve failures, and analyze the test outcomes. The goal is to move from "this prompt works on the examples I tried" to "I have evidence this prompt works reliably."

Assignment 3: Engineering Decision Portfolio

10% · Due: Week 15 — Dec 14, start of class

This is a assignment that asks you to reflect on the engineering decisions you made during the semester. The decisions can come from assignments, the project, or your own independent AI use. You will need actual artifacts (e.g., the prompt, test case(s), paragraph(s) from your DECISIONS.md, PR comment, or code snippet) to supplement your writings.

Check-in Surveys (4 surveys)

3% · Due: Baseline Wk 1 | T1 Wk 9 | T2 Wk 13 | Post Wk 16

Four course experience check-ins across the semester. Graded on completion.

Labs

Labs run during the second ~60 minutes of each Monday class session. Week 3 is worth 2%; all other graded labs are worth 1% each. Labs are graded on completion and genuine participation — there is no performance threshold.

Lab guides are posted on the course portal before each class. Some labs require software installed before class — check the schedule for setup instructions.

Please check the calendar page for each week's lab information and the submission criteria.

Prompt Engineering Log

The prompt engineering log is an individual running record maintained throughout the semester. It is not submitted as a standalone deliverable — it provides the evidence base for Assignment 5.

Each entry has four fields:

What I asked the model to do — one sentence
What it produced — one sentence describing the kind of output
What I decided and why — one to two sentences on whether you accepted, modified, or rejected it
What this tells me about the gap between intent and output — one sentence takeaway

Write an entry after every significant AI interaction — when you made a deliberate engineering judgment about whether to use, modify, or override the output. Students who maintain the log consistently throughout the semester find Assignment 5 straightforward; those who try to reconstruct it in December find they cannot remember the specific moments that mattered.