MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

MASTERS IN BUSINESS ANALYTICS

2022/2023

Masters in Business Analytics

MODULE
Natural Language Analysis

Module Handbook

© 2023 Page 1
 MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

Module Handbook: Natural Language Analysis

CONTENTS

Page

TEACHING STAFF: .................................................................................................................. 3

MODULE OUTLINE ................................................................................................................. 3
DELIVERY MECHANISMS ..................................................................................................... 3
STUDENT WORKLOAD .......................................................................................................... 3
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT .................................................................................................. 3
ASSESSMENT CRITERIA ........................................................................................................ 4
STAFF-STUDENT AND STUDENT-STUDENT COMMUNICATION .................................... 4

Masters in Business Analytics

OBTAINING HELP ................................................................................................................... 4
MODULE SYLLABUS AND RECOMMENDED READING ................................................... 5
COURSE OUTLINE............................................................................................................... 5

NB
This handbook is intended for the guidance of students taking this module in 2022/2023.
Whilst the details contained in this handbook represent teaching staff intentions at the time
of writing, it is in the nature of higher education that some module information, such as
syllabus, reading lists and assessment details, may be subject to modifications during the
teaching of a module. Teaching staff reserve the right to make such minor changes in the
matters covered by this publication and will endeavour to publicise any such changes as
widely and timely as possible.

2023 Page 2
 MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

TEACHING STAFF:

Module Lecturers Dr Donald Sturgeon and Dr Noura Al Moubayed

Telephone +44 (0) 191 33 41749
e-mail [email protected] and [email protected]
Web page https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/staff/?mode=staff&id=14675

MODULE OUTLINE
Natural Language Processing is one of the most highly sought topics in industry. With 3.2 billion
social media users worldwide (42% of 2019 world population), social media marketing has
become essential for any business to provide the best possible customer service by improving the
marketing campaigns and analysing and responding to comments, mentions, and messages
swiftly. The main sources of natural language data are social and professional media platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. News articles from various types such as BBC, CNN,
Medium, reddit, and personal blogs. In addition to products and movie reviews such as Amazon
Customer Reviews, Quora, and Which?, Netflix, and IMDb.
In this module, you will learn how to use some of the most common NLP libraries to process
text. The module will be hands-on to cover the following: 1) text pre-processing 2) features

Masters in Business Analytics

extraction 3) Language models 4) Prediction 5) text generation 6) advanced concepts e.g.,
attention-based models such as transformers.
The module aims to give the students rich practical experience and the ability to handle any
natural language task in both the industry and academia.

DELIVERY MECHANISMS
The module is delivered over at least 24 hours, through a combination of lectures and workshops.
The lectures will take place on every Tuesday from 11:00-13:00 and the workshops will take
place on Monday 2-5PM and Thursday 2-5PM on the w/c 23rd/Jan, 6th/Feb, 20th/Feb, and
6th/Mar. The students will be provided with the lectures and workshops material on every
corresponding Sunday.

STUDENT WORKLOAD
In addition to attending the scheduled sessions, undertaking preparation for them as may be
requested from time to time, the students will complete summative assessments.

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
The summative assessment for this module will take the form of a written assignment based on a
defined case study. For this assessment, students are required to write 1,500 words maximum.
Information relating to this will be given out at the beginning of the module
Please consult the Assessment section of the Programme Handbook, for more details,
particularly information on the required format, referencing, submission procedures, and grade

2023 Page 3
 MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

descriptors. Summative assignments have to be a student’s individual piece of work.

Collaboration between students in writing the summative assignment is not permitted.

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
Performance in the assessments for the module is judged against the following criteria:
• Relevance to question(s)
• Organisation, structure and presentation
• Suitability of proposed solutions
• Depth of understanding
• Analysis and discussion
• Use of sources and referencing
• Overall findings and conclusions

STAFF-STUDENT AND STUDENT-STUDENT COMMUNICATION

Staff will communicate with you via announcements during scheduled sessions, e-mails, the
internal post, and the announcement board on Ultra. You should check your e-mail regularly,
ideally once a day. You should also regularly check the module entry on Ultra, where lecture
material and other module information will be posted (see next section). If you need to meet
teaching staff during term time, you can contact them directly via email to schedule a meeting.

Masters in Business Analytics

If you wish to communicate with fellow students on matters relating to the module, you may ask
your lecturer to make an announcement at the beginning/end of a lecture. Alternatively, they
may do so by e-mail and via Ultra.

ULTRA
The following material will be posted on Ultra:
• A copy of this handbook
• Timetable changes
• Material related to teaching sessions
• Additional references
• Web links to facilitate research
• Other announcements
You should consult the module entry on Ultra at least every 3 days.

OBTAINING HELP
You should always feel welcome to talk to staff whenever you wish to discuss any aspect of the
module. Please do keep in touch with us. A small misunderstanding can turn into a big problem
if it is not dealt with in a timely manner. It is our duty and pleasure to help you in any way we
can to enjoy, and be successful in, this module.
The first port of call for any queries relating to your understanding of the material and study
skills should be the relevant lecturing staff, especially for queries relating to the module's outline,
lecture material and readings. The ultimate responsibility for the success of the module rests with
the module leader, who is always happy to discuss any aspect of the module with you and
welcomes comments and suggestions on how to improve the module at any time during the year.

2023 Page 4
 MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

MODULE SYLLABUS AND RECOMMENDED READING

The following table give an overview of the topics covered by the module. Further information
may be provided on Ultra as the module progresses.
Some reading is identified below. Additional references will be provided during the module. You
should also undertake your own search for additional relevant literature and follow up relevant
references contained in the literature identified below.

COURSE OUTLINE

Lectures are on Tuesday from 11:00-13:00, and the workshops will take place on Monday 2-
5PM and Thursday 2-5PM on the w/c 23rd/Jan, 6th/Feb, 20th/Feb, and 6th/Mar. The
students will be split to two groups, one will attend Monday workshops and the other will join
the Thursday workshops.

Week-1 commencing 16th /Jan

Lecture: Introduction to NLP and its real-life applications.

Text Pre-processing and Features Extraction

Masters in Business Analytics

Week-2 commencing 23rd /Jan

Lecture: Language Modelling, Neural Language Modelling, and their

interpretation.

Workshop-1: Tweet classification: disaster data exploration

Tweet classification: disaster data using shallow models

Week-3 commencing 30th /Jan

Lecture: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for Text Classification.

Week-4 commencing 06th /Feb

Lecture: Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) and advanced variations of RNNs f

or Language Models.

Workshop-2: Tweet classification disaster data using LSTM

Week-5 commencing 13th /Feb

Lecture: Sequence-to-Sequence Architectures and (Neural) Machine Translation

2023 Page 5
 MODULE HANDBOOK BUSINESS ANALYTICS

Week-6 commencing 20th /Feb

Lecture: Transformers and Attention based Models.

Workshop-3: Neural Machine Translation with Attention

Week-7 commencing 27th /Feb

Lecture: Transformers Language Models: BERT + GPT

Week-8 commencing 06th /Mar

Lecture: Multitask Learning

Workshop-4: Sentiment Analysis using Transformer based Models

Masters in Business Analytics

Week-9 commencing 13th /Mar

Lecture: NLP Ethics and Fairness

2023 Page 6