DofE AI Silver Award
A 12-week, 3-month Skills section route covering ML mathematics, neural networks, TensorFlow and sentiment classification.
12 weeks3 monthsLive onlineDofE Skills
Silver Skills Section
DofE AI Silver Award
Silver Outcomes
Students build a stronger foundation in AI mathematics, visual programming and neural-network reasoning.
Mathematical Foundations
Vectors, matrices, derivatives and gradient descent are introduced through model-building contexts.
Linear algebraCalculus
Neural Networks
Students explore weights, biases, layers, forward propagation and visual neural-network simulations.
NetworksTensorFlow
Applied ML Projects
Blockly regression, MNIST digit classification and IMDB sentiment analysis create visible portfolio evidence.
MNISTSentiment
Week-by-Week Silver Curriculum
A rigorous 12-week programme moving from mathematical foundations through neural networks and text classification.
1
Linear Algebra: Vectors
Vector spaces, dimensions, matrix transformations and dot products for data representation.
2
Linear Algebra: SOEs
Solving systems of linear equations and mapping spatial transformations algorithmically.
3
Calculus and Model Fitting
Rates of change, slopes, partial derivatives and how optimisation adjusts model weights.
4
Linear Regression
Building a line of best fit and updating model error through gradient descent.
5
Blockly Regression Pipeline
Building a structural linear-regression workflow with visual node-based programming.
Project milestone
6
Neural Networks
Weights, biases, input layers, hidden layers, output layers and forward propagation.
7
Neural Network Simulator
Exploring an interactive React neural-network app to understand model behaviour.
Project milestone
8
Tensors and TensorFlow
N-dimensional data structures, arrays and compiling layers with TensorFlow tools.
9
MNIST Classification
Training a visual algorithm to read and classify handwritten digits from 0 to 9.
Project milestone
10
Sentiment and IMDB
Text processing, word tokenisation and transforming raw reviews into model-ready data.
11
Sentiment Pipeline Part 1
Designing the natural-language-processing structure for sentiment classification.
Project milestone
12
Sentiment Pipeline Part 2
Tuning, training, evaluating and presenting the final Silver showcase.
Project milestone
Questions Parents Ask
Clear answers for families deciding whether this route fits their child's current coding level, goals and schedule.
Does Silver require previous AI experience?
Silver is best for students who are comfortable with structured learning and ready to meet mathematics through machine learning examples. Bronze is a better start for complete AI beginners.
What makes Silver different from Bronze?
Silver goes deeper into the maths and model mechanics behind machine learning, including linear algebra, gradient descent, neural networks and TensorFlow-style workflows.
Can Silver students move to Gold?
Yes. Gold is designed for students ready to move from visual and conceptual machine learning into Python-based applied data science.
Ready to Start Silver?
Check the live timetable or book a trial lesson before joining the Silver AI cohort.