Time: about 10 minutes. Working alone is fine.
You need somewhere to keep written work for the rest of the module — a document, a notebook, a file. This activity produces its first entry.
Why this activity exists
The learning contract says responsibility for a piece of work stays with you. That is easy to agree with and easy to forget the moment an output arrives looking finished. Writing down, in advance, one specific thing you intend to check makes the commitment concrete enough to be kept — and specific enough to notice when you have broken it.
Part 1 — write the sentence (5 minutes)
Think about a real piece of work you have coming up, or one you finished recently, where you have used or might use an AI system. Coursework, a summary, a piece of code, an email, a set of references, a revision plan — anything real.
Write one sentence in this shape:
In [the piece of work], I will verify [the specific thing] rather than trust it, by [the specific check].
Three rules for the sentence:
- Name a specific artefact, not a category. "The three references it gave me" beats "the sources".
- Name a check that could actually fail. If there is no result that would make you say "that is wrong, I need to fix it", it is not a check.
- Keep yourself as the subject. The sentence describes something you will do, not something you hope the tool will get right.
Two examples of the shape, so you can see the difference the rules make:
- Too vague to act on: In my essay, I will make sure the AI output is accurate.
- Specific enough to keep: In my lab report, I will verify the unit conversion it produced by recomputing it myself on paper and comparing the two numbers to three significant figures.
Write your own. One sentence is enough; two is fine if the check needs a clause of its own.
Part 2 — name what you are not checking (2 minutes)
Underneath your sentence, add one line naming something in the same piece of work that you have decided not to check, and why that is a reasonable decision.
This is not a trick. Checking everything is not possible and pretending otherwise produces a policy nobody follows. The skill is deciding deliberately, and being able to say afterwards what your decision was. Unit 2 gives you a way to make that decision systematically.
Part 3 — get your self-check route working (3 minutes)
Pick a route now, before you need it under time pressure, and confirm it runs.
Browser route. How you open the self-check page depends on how you got the
module. If you were given a link to the module website, use its self-check page.
If you downloaded a release, open dist/site/selfcheck.html directly — it works
straight from a file, with no internet connection. If you are working from the
source repository, build/site/selfcheck.html exists only after make selfcheck
has been run; if it is missing, use the release version instead.
Python route. From course/lab/, run:
python3 selfcheck.py list
You should see every checkpoint in the module, grouped by unit, with your status against each.
If neither route runs, say so to your instructor now rather than at Unit 5, where the checkpoints start doing real work.
Now take the checkpoint
This unit's checkpoint is cp00-contract. It asks one question about the
learning contract. Either route:
python3 selfcheck.py run cp00-contract # or use the browser self-check
Run it from course/lab/ if you are using the command line. If you get it
wrong, read the feedback rather than just retrying — it names the specific
confusion involved, and that confusion is a common one worth having named.
Then keep your verification sentence somewhere you will find it again. Unit 8 asks you to look back at it and say honestly whether you kept it.
Marking guidance — open this once you have done the activity, to check your own work
There is no single correct answer to this activity. There is, however, a clear difference between a sentence that could be kept and one that could not, and that difference is what to look for.
For a learner marking their own work
Read your sentence back and ask three questions.
1. Could someone else tell whether I did it?
If a classmate read your sentence and then looked at your finished work, could they say whether the check happened? "I will make sure it is accurate" fails this. "I will recompute the conversion on paper and compare to three significant figures" passes it.
2. Is there an outcome that would count as failure?
Name it. If your check cannot come out badly, it is a reassurance, not a check. A useful test: finish the sentence "…and if that check fails, I will ___". If you cannot finish it, tighten the check.
3. Am I the one doing the work?
Sentences of the form "I will use a better prompt so the output is reliable" describe a hope about the tool. Sentences of the form "I will look up each reference in the library catalogue" describe an action of yours. The second kind is what the contract asks for.
If your sentence fails one of these, rewrite it now. It takes a minute and the rewritten version is the one Unit 8 will ask you about.
For Part 2 — the thing you decided not to check — a good answer names something specific and gives a reason connected to consequence: the error would be obvious, or cheap to fix, or the passage is going to be rewritten anyway. A weak answer is "I will check everything", which is not a decision, or "the rest is probably fine", which is a guess dressed as a policy.
For an instructor
Expected time: 10 minutes. This activity is formative and is best not graded; its value is as the first entry in the evidence pack and as a reference point for Unit 8's reflection.
Strong responses typically show three features:
- a named artefact at the level of a single claim, number, function, or citation;
- a check whose method is stated, not just its intention;
- a failure condition that is at least implicit.
Common weak patterns, and the intervention for each:
| Pattern | Example | What to say |
|---|---|---|
| Category, not artefact | "I will check the facts." | Ask which fact, in which paragraph. Specificity is the whole exercise. |
| Check with no possible failure | "I will read it through carefully." | Ask what a bad outcome would look like. Reading is attention, not verification. |
| Responsibility displaced onto the tool | "I will ask it to double-check itself." | A system's second output about its first is generated the same way as the first. Unit 2 explains why this is not independent evidence. |
| Disclosure offered in place of checking | "I will declare that I used AI." | Both are required and they answer different questions. This is precisely the confusion cp00-contract names. |
| Whole-output verification | "I will verify everything it produces." | Not a policy anyone keeps. Part 2 exists to make the trade-off explicit rather than silent. |
Cohort signal worth watching for. If a large share of the group produces sentences of the last two kinds, spend a moment on the distinction between provenance and correctness before Unit 2, because the triage activity there assumes it.
The checkpoint
This unit's checkpoint is cp00-contract. Its question, options, correct answer
and diagnostic feedback are defined once, in the checkpoint block at the end of
this file; ../lab/checkpoints.py and the browser self-check both read that
block, so there is a single source and the routes cannot drift apart.
What the checkpoint is testing is the distinction between disclosing how work was produced and being answerable for whether it is right. If a learner reports getting it wrong, do not supply the answer: the feedback the framework gives on the most common wrong option is more useful than a correction, because it names the confusion rather than replacing it.
Learners run it with either route:
python3 selfcheck.py run cp00-contract # or use the browser self-check
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