How to Engage with the Curriculum

Structure of the Curriculum

This curriculum is made up of 8 sections, each of which has been designed to require roughly 3-4 hours of engagement.

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Each section links together external resources and exercises to engage with, which are displayed on blocks. Before moving on, take a quick glance at the next section ‘1. What is Cooperative AI’ so you can see what this looks like. On each block for external resources, you’ll find a link to the resource and which parts we’d like you to engage with. We’ve also labelled each external resource and exercise with:

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• Whether or not they’re optional.
• How long the resource is in words or minutes, and the technicality or density of the material (this doesn’t apply to exercises).
• The topics that will come up.
• The prerequisite material required to get the most out of it (more on this under the next heading).

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The position of the exercises in each section has been thought through carefully, so we highly recommend doing them as they appear and not leaving them until you’ve finished the content of a section.

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Prerequisites and the Appendix Section

We rarely expect background knowledge throughout the curriculum and hope people from multiple different backgrounds can find value in it. However, when we think some background knowledge would be particularly beneficial, we aim to include links to relevant material as needed. (Note that the majority of required content in the curriculum does not have prerequisites, but the majority of optional content does.)

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If we think an exercise or external resource needs prerequisite material, you’ll find a drop down on its respective block that displays a list of concepts that we think you’ll need to be familiar with. Each listed concept also links to material in the appendix, which we think are good resources for understanding said concept. For example, if ‘solution concepts’ is listed in the prerequisites, clicking it will take you to this part of the appendix listing material that we think will help you understand solution concepts. Note that the same tags always link to the same material in the appendix, so if you engage with the ‘solution concepts’ material for example, you won’t need to again (unless it’s helpful) before engaging with another piece of content or exercise with the ‘solution concepts’ prerequisite tag.

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Learning Best Practices

Before engaging with a curriculum or spending a lot of time learning something new, we highly recommend reviewing some learning best practices. This resource is quite comprehensive and aims to be evidence based in its recommendations: Learning How to Learn (And 20+ Studies). Take a little time before diving into the content to make sure you have a system in place to remind yourself of or implement as many of these best practices as possible.

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Feedback

This curriculum is currently in beta and we are trialling facilitated courses based on the material, so feedback now is especially valuable to us. At the end of each section, you will see a link to a short 5-10min feedback form. If you would like to leave feedback, please do so as close to finishing a section as possible. There is also a feedback form at the end of the curriculum for sharing your overall impression.