---
title: "EPOL 479 Fall 2026: Weekly Overviews"
course: "479-fall-2026"
type: "weekly-overview-index"
---

# EPOL 479 Fall 2026: Weekly Overviews

These pages turn each lecture into a weekly learning cycle: orient to the key concept, complete the readings, compare machine and human learning, discuss the guiding questions, and finish a self-assessed activity. Sessions 2 to 6 carry the five self-assessed activities; Session 7 is given over to the final report instead.

Each activity begins with a dialogue between a machine learner and a human learner. The dialogue is evidence for reflection, not evidence that the machine is conscious or that its account of its own operation is authoritative.

## Weekly map

| Session | Key concept | Guiding question | Assessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| [1](week-1.md) | Synthesis | What changes when human and machine learning are treated as interdependent? | Baseline *(not assessed)* |
| [2](week-2.md) | Experience | Can a machine have experience, or only process inputs and state? | Self-assessment 1 |
| [3](week-3.md) | Recognition | Can a human-machine encounter become mutual recognition rather than simulated service? | Self-assessment 2 |
| [4](week-4.md) | Attention **and** Consciousness | If a system attends without any awareness, what exactly has been lost? | Self-assessment 3 |
| [5](week-5.md) | Alignment | Who aligns whom when people and machines learn together? | Self-assessment 4 |
| [6](week-6.md) | Critique | Can an AI system identify contradictions within its own standards and practices? | Self-assessment 5 |
| [7](week-7.md) | Synthesis, technosymbiosis, and history | What kind of shared human-machine learning future follows from the course? | *Final report* |

Attention and Consciousness share Session 4. They are still two concepts, not
one: pairing them puts the course's sharpest case in a single session, since
machine attention is a demonstrable operation that runs with no awareness at all.

Sessions 2 to 6 each close with a self-assessed activity — five in total. Session
7 has none: it is given over to the final synthesis report, due Friday 16 October.

## A weekly learning cycle

1. Read the overview and identify the session's key concept (Session 4 has two).
2. Complete the core readings; use the further readings to extend a particular interest.
3. Begin the activity with the supplied machine-human chat prompt.
4. Produce the weekly artifact and answer the reflection questions.
5. Score your work using the four-point self-assessment scale and name one next step.

## Self-assessment scale

- **4 — Strong:** clear, accurate, well-supported, and independently developed.
- **3 — Proficient:** mostly clear and accurate, with relevant support.
- **2 — Developing:** partial understanding or uneven support.
- **1 — Beginning:** minimal evidence of the criterion.
- **0 — Not yet shown:** missing or not attempted.

See the [complete references grouped by week](../references-by-week.md) for the course-wide citation audit and unresolved source details.