CMU - Language Technologies Institute - Education

LTI Course Categories, Focus Area courses, and Independent Study courses

This page explains various LTI course categories. First, we explain the numbering for undergraduate and Masters-level courses. Then we list all the courses that count towards each of the four PhD "Focus Areas" (the Focus Areas are only relevant for LTI PhD students). Following the Focus Area courses we list and explain the various Independent Study course numbers.

This list includes CS department courses that count as LTI Focus Area classes (as opposed to electives). Further information about CS courses should be available from the Computer Science Department.

Depending on a student's interests, electives may be taken from the LTI, the Computer Science Department, or other CMU or Pitt departments. Students interested in speech should consider speech-oriented electives; other areas of interest include Linguistics, Statistics, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Undergraduate courses: Undergraduate courses have numbers below 11-600. Senior-level undergraduate courses (11-4xx and 11-5xx) count for MLT graduation credit, but not PhD graduation credit.

Masters-Only courses: Masters-only courses are numbered 11-6xx, and do not count for PhD graduation credit.

Linguistic Focus
Course	Title	Units	Semester
11-719	Computational Models of Discourse Analysis	12	Spring
11-721	Grammars and Lexicons	12	Fall
11-722	Grammar Formalisms	12	Spring
11-723	Formal Semantics	12	Fall
11-725	Meaning in Language	12	Fall

Computer Science Focus
Course	Title	Units	Semester
11-711	Algorithms for NLP	12	Fall
11-791	Software Engineering for IT, Principles (I)	12	Fall
15-681 15-781	CS Machine Learning (can only count under one focus per student) - LTI PhD students must register for 15-781 for it to count towards their required 8 courses. LTI Masters students should register for 15-681.
15-750	CS Algorithms
15-780	CS Artificial Intelligence

Statistical/Learning Focus
Course	Title	Units	Semester
11-761	Language and Statistics	12	Spring
11-762	Language and Statistics II	12	Fall
15-681 15-781	CS Machine Learning (can only count under one focus per student) - LTI PhD students must register for 15-781 for it to count towards their required 8 courses. LTI Masters students should register for 15-681.
15-880 15-882 15-883	CS Neural Networks

Task Orientation Focus
Course	Title	Units	Semester
11-731	Machine Translation	12	Spring
11-741	Information Retrieval	12	Spring
11-748	Information Extraction	12	Spring
11-751	Speech Recognition	12	Fall
11-752	Speech: PPPS	12	Spring
11-772	Analysis of Social Media	12	Spring
11-792	Intelligent Information Systems Project	12	Spring

Independent Study Numbers
Course	Title	Units	Semester
11-910	Independent Study: Project	6-36	Both
11-920	Independent Study: Breadth	6-18	Both
11-925	Independent Study: Area of Concentration	6-36	Both
11-929	Masters Thesis	6-18	Both
11-930	Dissertation Research	5-36	Both
Note that the Independent Study courses listed above do not normally count for LTI class credit. The exception is if an Independent Study is used to replace an unavailable LTI course (with prior permission of the chair of the LTI graduate programs). Masters students: Note that only 12 units of "Independent Study: Project" may normally count towards your total course requirements. 11-910 is used for Independent Study connected with a project. 11-920 and 11-925 are normally given a grade; 11-925 differs from 11-920 in that 11-925 is supervised by your advisor, while 11-920 is supervised by some other faculty member. 11-930 is used for a PhD student's thesis research after the thesis proposal is accepted.