Text | "China Science News" reporter Wen Caifei
This summer, Zhang Xiangxu and Xu Ningyu, undergraduate students majoring in Chinese language and literature at Fudan University , became "amazing" and "unbelievable" in the mouths of their classmates.
Because they did something that many people want to do but dare not do or cannot do - study directly for a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University.
What's more, Zhang Xiangxu is still a "proper" liberal arts student. He majored in liberal arts in high school and undergraduate.
In this fall semester, each of them will usher in a new identity - Zhang Xiangxu will go to Hillhouse School of Artificial Intelligence, Renmin University of China to study for a doctoral degree, and Xu Ningyu will be ranked second in the Chinese language major with a total GPA of 3.8. After passing the test results, he became a direct graduate student of Professor Huang Xuanjing of the School of Computer Science and Technology, Fudan University.
Zhang Xiangxu
It has always been easy to transfer from theory to literature, but difficult to transfer from literature to theory. The hurdle before them is not just to make up for a math or physics course. Behind the incredible story, how did they do it?
Although it is difficult, it can be achieved with hard work
Similar to the ideas of most liberal arts students, Zhang Xiangxu felt at first that "programming is difficult and unusable", and he was somewhat resistant. But when he took "VB Programming" in his freshman year, he discovered that "his usual homework scores are quite high."
In his sophomore year, he read "The Beauty of Mathematics " by Wu Jun, an expert in natural language processing and search in the field of artificial intelligence. The series of articles in
's book have received millions of views, "suddenly attracting my curiosity about natural language processing." In the professional class not long after, the teacher mentioned computational linguistics again.
Driven by curiosity and the advice of his seniors, Zhang Xiangxu taught himself Stanford University's well-known course "Deep Natural Language Processing".
"After studying, I was very excited. I found Qiu Xipeng, a professor at Fudan University of Computer Science and Technology, and asked him for advice on what courses to take. Finally, I determined my intention to switch from Chinese language to natural language processing."
However, the biggest thing before Zhang Xiangxu was The problem is undoubtedly to supplement the mathematical foundation.
Before formal study, he used his vacation time to study courses on MOOC , such as " Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics " of National University of Defense Technology , "Practical Popular Linear" of Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology Algebra" etc.
When studying MOOCs, many people have the experience of abandoning courses, but he "set 'small goals' for himself, weekly as a unit, decide which courses to take each week, and slowly persisted." .
Speaking of persistence, Zhang Xiangxu joined the army after his freshman year, and the recruit company had to take the 3,000-meter long-distance running test.
He accidentally sprained his foot before the exam. In order not to miss it, he sprayed Yunnan Baiyao and gritted his teeth and ran down.
The Chinese Department of Fudan University provides 12 credits for students to freely choose courses throughout the school. But in the end, in order to supplement basic science and engineering courses such as " Advanced Mathematics ", "Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics", " Linear Algebra ", "Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning", " Neural Network and Deep Learning ", Zhang Xiangxu chose the recent 30 credits, more than 10 credits.
During the semester when he had the most work, he took four science and engineering courses. "It took an afternoon and an evening to complete an assignment."
Liu Qin also made extraordinary efforts in interdisciplinary studies.
In 2018, when she was still a junior at Fudan School of Philosophy, she hoped to choose the natural language processing direction of the School of Computer Science and Technology when she was applying for graduate school.
The difference from Zhang Xiangxu is that Liu Qin majored in a science-oriented liberal arts major - logic and science philosophy . He has never stopped basic training in mathematics, and he also studied science in high school.
She was more concerned about making up for her shortcomings in computer courses, and chose a minor/double degree to make up for it.
However, the credit requirements for the minor are high, about forty or fifty credits.
students usually take 25 to 28 credits in a semester, but in the two semesters when Liu Qin was a minor, he had to take 30 to 32 credits in each semester to meet the requirements, which is close to the "critical value" of credits per semester - it cannot exceed 32 credits.
She also has to attend the class of Huang Xuanjing, a professor at Fudan University of Computer Science and Technology.
Liu Qin is in the Handan campus, and Huang Xuanjing is in the Zhangjiang campus. Every week, Liu Qin has to take a half-hour school bus to attend classes in another campus.
"I really couldn't keep up with my energy. In the end, I insisted on completing the basic courses in computer science, but I did not complete the credits to obtain the double degree certificate. In fact, from the beginning to the end, I just wanted to lay a foundation in computer science through minor courses." She finally As promised, he studied under Zhang Qi, a professor at Fudan University of Computer Science and Technology, and is preparing to go to the University of Southern California to continue his doctoral studies this year.
It may not be successful, but there is no need to "burn the boat"
When it comes to text conversion, many people think it is extremely difficult. However, the natural language processing laboratory where Huang Xuanjing works usually encourages students to "try hard." There are many postgraduate students from Chinese, philosophy, and foreign languages majoring in the
laboratory.
Xu Ningyu Photo courtesy of Fudan University
Xu Ningyu is one of them. Xu Ningyu’s undergraduate senior brother Qian Peng also graduated from this laboratory and went to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study for a PhD. He is also what Huang Xuanjing calls “one of the three most satisfactory students in the past 10 years.”
Many foreign universities have departments of linguistics, and natural language processing and linguistics are indistinguishable.
Among Huang Xuanjing’s colleagues who work in overseas universities, there are both undergraduates from Chinese departments and many well-known professors with computer backgrounds.
Natural language processing in domestic universities is scattered in departments such as computer departments, Chinese departments, and foreign languages departments.
"There is a hurdle in converting text to theory, but once you get over it, you will only get better and better." She told " Chinese Science Journal " that the grammatical rules of natural language are all written by linguists with a background in linguistics. students are more likely to find errors that machines cannot recognize.
Colleagues in the Chinese Department often recommend students to her, and she also encourages computer majors to take courses in the Chinese Department.
Qian Peng and Xu Ningyu approached Huang Xuanjing during their early undergraduate years. "Their characteristic is that they have strong oral and written expression skills. Whether they are writing papers or giving speeches, expression skills are very important."
took Qian Peng two years to assess her; it was Xu Ningyu's turn, and it only took one year. "This is the benefit of 'predecessors planting trees for future generations to enjoy the shade'!" Huang Xuanjing said with a smile.
Even so, no one dares to guarantee that Wen Zhuanli will definitely succeed.
In addition to making up for their science and engineering coursework, Huang Xuanjing’s requirement for Qian Peng and Xu Ningyu was to pass the computer-based exam. Because whether the idea can be turned into a programming language can only be determined through computer testing.
Every year, top students from various majors fail in the final computer-based examination.
These two people were able to succeed across disciplines because they obtained passing scores in the computer-based examination and were among the best in their major's performance points.
The same goes for Zhang Xiangxu. "During the whole process, I have not made the determination to 'burn the boat'. If I can turn around, I will continue to work hard in this direction; if I can't turn around, I will consider carrying out research related to computing in this department. The only thing I have made up my mind is You must do interdisciplinary studies. "
can directly master artificial intelligence. Zhang Xiangxu bluntly said that "there is a certain degree of chance." The Hillhouse School of Artificial Intelligence of Renmin University of China gave liberal arts students the opportunity to test.
However, many colleges and universities limit their subject requirements for direct PhDs to science and engineering majors such as computer and communications, and do not open the door to liberal arts students.
The only thing Zhang Xiangxu regrets is that he did not participate in student practice during his undergraduate period.
Once, a graduate student in Qiu Xipeng's laboratory wanted to find a few undergraduate students to form a team to participate in a competition. He quickly signed up. Unfortunately, the initiator later abandoned the competition due to various reasons.
He told Qiu Xipeng of his regrets, "Teacher Qiu encouraged me that competitions can certainly train people, but in fact, carefully designing the curriculum is also a kind of training for hands-on ability."
The same regret did not happen to Xu Ningyu. During her undergraduate studies, she entered Huang Xuanjing’s laboratory. On the day of the interview with China Science News, Huang Xuanjing was helping Xu Ningyu revise his paper, which was to be submitted to a top conference on natural language processing.
Relying on his own aura, Xu Ningyu discovered a good problem. Huang Xuanjing is very proud of her achievements even before she formally studies for a Ph.D.
Academic program exploration provides more possibilities for interdisciplinary education
Heavy academic burden, conflicts between classes and practice, and may not lead to success... The problems exposed by the transfer of literature and theory prompted Fudan to quickly reflect on interdisciplinary education.
In 2017, Fudan began to explore the “2+X” undergraduate training system.
"2" refers to starting from both general education and professional training to consolidate the foundation of personal development; "X" refers to providing professional advancement, interdisciplinary development, and innovation based on students' individual growth needs under the credit system Entrepreneurship and other development paths.
Among them, students are provided with cross-integrated development paths through the construction of "study courses", and the "2+X" program has covered all departments of Fudan in 2020.
What is the academic process? The academic program originated in Germany and developed in the United States. Taiwan began to experiment with academic programs in colleges and universities in the 1970s. Later, academic programs were mostly used for interdisciplinary, innovation and entrepreneurship education.
Hu Bo, deputy director of the Academic Affairs Office of Fudan University, explained that Chinese universities often use minors to achieve interdisciplinary interdisciplinary studies. There are similarities and differences between academic courses and minors.
Fudan’s approach is that when a certain cross-cutting demand is not enough to open a new major alone, the school encourages the cross-integration of first-class teachers from different departments and disciplines to form a group of themed and systematic courses around emerging and cross-disciplinary directions. Modules are available for students across the school to choose from.
students are required to take 15 to 20 credits, which is far less than the 40 or 50 credits required for a minor. The
academic courses are derived from existing courses such as professional courses, basic courses and general courses. They are taught in the same class and marked with students from the departments where the courses are offered, which not only ensures the quality of teaching, but also brings great challenges to students.
In 2018, the mathematical logic program jointly launched by Fudan School of Philosophy, School of Mathematical Sciences and School of Computer Science and Technology was the school’s earlier exploration.
This is a subject between philosophy, mathematics and computer science. Individual departments and second majors cannot meet the requirements for starting the course.
This course includes a series of courses such as " Set Theory ", "Computable Theory", " Principles of Mathematical Analysis ", etc.
"The foundation of a subject is a combination of a series of courses. A good combination of courses will prevent students from choosing a hammer in the east and a mallet in the west in cross-disciplinary course selection. Credits for the same and similar courses can be interchanged, such as the School of Mathematics' " The course "Mathematical Analysis" can replace "Principles of Mathematical Analysis" in the mathematical logic course, so as not to add extra pressure to students in choosing courses," said Yang Ruizhi, associate professor at Fudan School of Philosophy.
So far, Fudan has launched eight interdisciplinary programs including Western Classics, Neurolinguistics , and Data Intelligence and Business Decision-making.
In addition, each department has also launched interdisciplinary courses for students from foreign majors to study in this major. The total number of courses currently reaches hundreds.
"Students who are more logical among liberal arts students can try to switch to science through academic courses." Hu Bo emphasized.
In fact, the mathematical logic course has indeed attracted students from the history department, law, insurance, medicine and other majors to take the course. They are the seeds of future interdisciplinary studies.
In particular, the new college entrance examination has canceled the liberal arts and sciences subjects, and the mathematics ability assessment of candidates in high school will be treated equally, which will bring more possibilities to transfer from arts to science at the university level.
Liu Qin, Zhang Xiangxu, and Xu Ningyu were a little regretful that they did not catch up with Xuecheng, but they felt relieved when they thought that "their experiences were more or less consistent with Xuecheng's ideas and provided a reference for subsequent reforms."
In fact, similar teaching reforms in China include Nanjing University's "three-three system". Undergraduate courses are divided into three stages: general training, professional training and diversified training.
Among them, diversified training is divided into three channels: professional academic, compound and cross-disciplinary, and employment and entrepreneurship.
Some domestic universities have also borrowed the name of "micro-majors" from MOOCs to conduct interdisciplinary or innovative entrepreneurship in addition to students' major majors. "Its connotation is similar to that of academic study." Hu Bo added.
Abroad, Stanford University tried to establish 14 "CS (Computer Science) + Bachelor of Science".
However, the project was terminated in 2019.
Lu Xiaodong, an researcher at Peking University School of Education, believes that the possible reasons for the failure of the project are the decline in the number of course enrollees, the difficulty in satisfying the core courses, and the heavy burden on students.
Students who complete the course within 4 years need to give up other learning opportunities.
"More importantly, students need to discover the subtle relationship between computer science and another subject on their own, and students are very annoyed by this."
He reminded that only a few people can discover the above-mentioned subtleties. Relationships, batch training will bring frustration to most learners and will necessarily include "sacrifice."
Interdisciplinarity is the essence of the current construction of new liberal arts and new engineering, and these are also the risks and necessary "sacrifice" that naturally come with new engineering and new liberal arts .
Fudan adopts a "lenient in and wide out" attitude to reduce the risk value of the course. "There are two paths for the development of future academic programs: one is to gradually form a new interdisciplinary subject; second, even if it is impossible to open a new subject, it can still meet the needs of students for their future postgraduate development and help them establish basic thinking abilities." Hu Bo told China Science News.
In 2020, the first class of students from the mathematical logic program will graduate. Since then, not many students have actually graduated each year.
"This is in line with our expectations. In an environment with free entry and exit, students can gain something regardless of whether they complete the entire training process." Yang Ruizhi said.
Hu Bo added that conversion from literature to theory can only be achieved through taking courses and is not something that universities should encourage. "Only through the interweaving of courses and practice can students continue to discover problems and stimulate their desire to learn new knowledge."
New challenges, limited time to teach core content
Should undergraduate education have a solid foundation or focus on crossover? In this regard, although there are still different voices in domestic universities, one indisputable fact is that the solution to this problem no longer relies on single subject knowledge such as mathematics and physics.
For example, Olin Institute of Technology in the United States subverts the practice of traditional universities. It does not set up departments. Students have majors, but teachers have no departments. It equips teachers with a problem-oriented approach and conducts interdisciplinary learning.
"The so-called 'basic' cannot simply be equated with students' professional knowledge. What is more important is the ability to discover, analyze and solve problems, such as the cultivation of logical thinking; and innovative abilities, such as whether they can use new technologies to solve problems. The cultivation of these abilities relies more on cross-disciplinary approaches or drawing on knowledge from other disciplines," Hu Bo said.
For example, the mathematical logic course seems to be interdisciplinary, but in fact it is the foundation of computers, mathematics, and philosophy. It cultivates logical thinking ability, which can be described as the "foundation of multiple disciplines."
In order to do a good job in interdisciplinary design and encourage students to practice, Fudan has compressed the total credits to about 150 points, of which the credits for general courses and professional basic courses are controlled at about 115 credits.
If students are not prepared to cross disciplines, they can also choose professional advanced courses or innovation and entrepreneurship courses of about 35 credits.
For colleges and universities, diversification of choices is actually "increasing difficulty for themselves."
In the past, the number of people choosing a course was fixed, but now it changes every year, and classroom and teacher arrangements need to be adjusted year by year.
In the past, the background of students was almost the same, but now there are students from other majors who have not studied basic courses. How should teachers teach? In the past, there was a unified standard for the training of undergraduates in the Chinese Department, but now it has become "Chinese +
"In particular, one of the main features of the stage of the popularization of higher education is the continuous expansion of internal differences among college students. One of the main directions of university education reform is to form a pattern of 'large number of courses, many types, and short academic courses' , Expand students’ right to choose in learning.” Not long ago, Xie Weihe, a senior professor of liberal arts at Tsinghua University, wrote in the article “Courses and Courses.”
He pointed out that a major difficulty in academic curriculum reform is whether students can master the core knowledge, basic logic and main framework of a subject in the shortest possible time.
Although he has studied computer science for three years and his programming level is as good as that of a senior majoring in computer science, Liu Qin admitted that his ability to write code is still lacking. So, has she built interdisciplinary competencies?
Lu Xiaodong believes that being able to write and run code, although not so beautiful, is enough to show that the student has established interdisciplinary abilities. As for whether to improve, it depends on the actual needs of the individual's future career. In fact, "output" forces "input", and Liu Qin is also trying his best to improve his programming skills.
Moreover, at the postgraduate level, the basics can still be "make-up lessons". Huang Xuanjing suggested that Xu Ningyu systematically take self-taught undergraduate programming courses during her PhD.
In Yang Ruizhi’s view, “the difficulty of academic reform is to lay a solid foundation while quickly approaching cutting-edge research.” The rapid development of modern mathematical logic is in conflict with the very limited class time.
Yang Ruizhi and his colleagues try to expand the classroom space, offering advanced extracurricular courses such as "Advanced Set Theory" and "Advanced Model Theory", holding mathematical logic summer schools every year, and organizing mathematical logic seminars every month.
"Interest is the best teacher. Only by using cutting-edge knowledge to attract students into new fields can we cultivate more good seedlings for interdisciplinary fields." Yang Ruizhi said.
