AI Specialization Program

• Soft AI Academy
AI Specialization Program
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Technical Tracks
AI Engineering & Data
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Week 7

WEEK 7 — Capstone System Design & Model Building

Theme: Architect & Build a Real AI System

Week 7 is about:

Designing and building the system properly.

Not rushing to deploy.

Week 7 —

6 Lesson Structure

Lesson 1:

Problem Identification & Scope Definition

Focus:

Identifying a real African problem

Narrowing scope properly

Defining measurable objectives

Defining success metrics

Stakeholder thinking

Outcome: Students choose a meaningful, realistic problem.

Lesson 2:

Dataset Strategy & Collection

Focus:

Collecting real datasets

Simulating datasets if necessary

Cleaning & documenting dataset

Ethical data sourcing

Data risk assessment

Outcome: Students prepare production-ready dataset.

Lesson 3:

System Architecture Design

Focus:

Designing full system pipeline

Data flow diagram

Model selection reasoning

Storage decisions

API & integration planning

Deliverable: System architecture diagram.

Outcome: Students think like AI architects.

Lesson 4:

Model Development & Evaluation

Focus:

Building ML/DL model

Feature engineering

Training & tuning

Proper evaluation metrics

Validation strategy

Deliverable: Model evaluation report draft.

Outcome: Students build reliable model core.

Lesson 5:

Integrating GenAI or RAG Component

Focus:

Adding LLM functionality

Designing RAG if applicable

Prompt engineering

Controlled output handling

Guardrails setup

Outcome: Students integrate modern AI capability.

Lesson 6:

Bias Testing & Ethics Review

Focus:

Bias detection

Fairness evaluation

Testing edge cases

Risk assessment

Mitigation strategy

Deliverable: Ethics & bias mitigation explanation.

Outcome: Students build responsible systems.

Week 7 Final Outcome

By the end of Week 7, students have:

✔ Identified a real-world African problem

✔ Designed full system architecture

✔ Built and evaluated a model

✔ Integrated GenAI or RAG (if relevant)

✔ Conducted bias & ethics testing

✔ Produced core technical documentation

Week 7 produces:

A working AI system prototype (pre-deployment).