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Assignment Presentation
- Not all assignments will be written pieces, but some of
them will be: these notes are intended as guidance for their
composition and presentation. They are not intended to present
you with an additional burden (nor to insult you by implying
that you do not already know this!), but
- on the whole, participants welcome clear guidance
- you can crib this section to use with your own students
(Acknowledgement appreciated)
and it is no more effort to get it right (i.e. in accordance
with academic norms) than to get it wrong. So:
- If an assignment needs a binder, please use the
slim plastic clear-fronted "project folders" or a
single plastic sleeve with a staple in the top-left-hand corner
of the papers if at all possible. Carrying around a load of
ring-binders and even lever-arch files does not put the marker
in an appropriate dispassionate mood!
- Do not put each page in an individual plastic
sleeve: taking them out to annotate them is a pain. On DMU
Education courses, we have decided not to annotate submissions
in which each page is in a separate sleeve.
Layout
- Assignments should be double or one-and-a-half spaced, with
numbered pages, written on one side of A4 paper only with wide
(at least 1½"/4 cm/9 pica) margins.
12-point is a good size for
the text, and a serif type-face, such as Times New Roman
or Century
Schoolbook is easier to read (on paper) than a sans-serif
one such as Arial (which is better on screen). It
also helps if your name (or ID for anonymous marking
schemes) appears at the top or bottom of each page (in
case the marker has to undo the binder and pages get
separated)
- If at all possible submissions should be word-processed,
because:
- this is the most legible way of producing the work:
tipp-exed typing is not quite as good,
- it means that there is bound to be another copy available,
so that tutors can write on the submitted copy.
- This note is now fairly redundant: you need to be a
fairly committed luddite not to comply—and if you are that,
how come you are reading this?
- Sub-headings are often useful for different sections of
an assignment, but check their acceptability with the tutor
first. If you use them, please make them identifiable as such
with bold type or similar, as in this document.
- In more substantial pieces of work, such as dissertations,
use chapter and section divisions, perhaps with progressive
numbering—1, 1.1, etc. (and full tables of contents derived
from them) to indicate the shape and structure of the argument.
It is well worth familiarising yourself with all the facilities
offered by modern word-processors for keeping track of material,
including generating automatic tables of contents and even indexes.
- Numbered paragraphs make for easy reference to particular
sections on a marking sheet, but whether to use them or not
depends somewhat on the nature of the assignment. Some people
actually cite the code numbers for specified module outcomes
in the margins: not all assignments lend themselves to this,
but it is a useful device if you can use it. Note that outcomes
do not have to be addressed in numerical order: let the sense
of the assignment dictate their order.
Quotations
- Quotations should be clearly separated from the rest of
the text with quotation marks. Anything longer than a single
line should be indented and separated from the body of the text
by a blank line.
"So
a substantial piece of quoted material will look rather
like this, standing in the same relationship to the rest
of the text as does this paragraph." (Atherton, 1993:24)
Note that all quotations need the source, date and
page number (or at least the chapter reference) alongside them.
See below for the conventions.
- Only use quotations when:
- the author has made a point particularly well, and probably
more concisely than you could say it, or
- you are going on to discuss in detail what she or he
has said at this particular point.
Do not use quotations simply as a way of proving that
you have actually read the book or article!
- The referencing conventions to be followed in written work
in the social sciences and education (known as the Harvard system)
are that sources are referred to in the body of the text by
author and date in parentheses, e.g. Kolb
(1984), with the page or chapter number cited if direct
quotes or specific allusions to the author's argument are used,
e.g. Kolb (1984:47) or Kolb
(1984: ch. 4).
- If the references is part of an ongoing argument, you may
put the whole thing in parentheses.
"It
has been argued (Kolb, 1984) that..."
(Note that if the whole reference is in parentheses,
then those around the date and page numbers are omitted.)
- The date in question is the date of the original publication,
or of the edition you are working from: reprinting dates do
not count. Remember that since much research and opinion progresses
by a process of debate, the date of an article or book says
a great deal.
- If an author has produced more than one text in a given
year, snd you are drawing on several, refer to them
in the main text as (Bloggs, 2000a),
(Bloggs, 2000b) according to the order in which they
appear in the main references at the end of the work. Make
sure that you use the same "a", "b"
etc. suffixes in the references section.
- I'm not sure what you do if an author has produced more
than 26 sources in a year!
- For classic texts, page numbers may differ from edition
to edition: either specify the edition clearly in the bibliography,
or stick to chapter or section references
- Academics are notorious for writing in droves. (What is
the collective noun for lecturers? A "waffle" perhaps?)
It is permissible to refer to the first author "et al."
in the text, e.g. Brickman et al. (1982),
rather than Brickman, Rabinowitz, Karuza,
Coates, Cohn and Kidder (1982)
- At the end of the project or dissertation full details should
be cited (in alphabetical order of author): e.g.
KOLB, D. A. (1984), Experiential Learning: experience as the
source of learning and development,
New Jersey, Prentice-Hall
- If the reference is to an article, the article title should
be "in quotes" and the name of the journal underlined or in italics. The volume and part of the journal (or
its specific date) should also be cited:
BRICKMAN, P., RABINOWITZ, V. C.,
KARUZA J., COATES D., COHN E. and KIDDER L. (1982), "Models
of Helping and Coping" American
Psychologist 37(4), pp.
368-84
MEZIROW, J. (1978), "Perspective
Transformation", Adult
Education (USA) vol. XXVIII
No 2 pp. 100-110
- If the reference is to a internet web page, then the information
should be referenced as follows:
- Use the same conventions as for conventional publication
in the main text.
- In the "references" or "bibliography"
section, cite:
Author, (Year) Title, [On-line],
Place of publication e.g. UK. Available from: Website
address [Accessed: give date]
The date of access is important, because the net is in
constant change, and the marker may well access a page and
find that it has changed.
Examples of referencing from the internet is:
International Dyslexia Association
(1998) "What is Dyslexia?", [On-line]; UK; Available
from: www.interdys.org/about_dy.htm [Accessed: 15/7/98]
ATHERTON J S (2002) Academic Practice: Assignment Presentation
Guidelines [On-line]:
UK: Available: http://www.doceo.co.uk/academic/
assignment_presentation.htm Accessed: 16 December 2002
- Since individuals web pages may have unique URLs, it may
be necessary to use the "a", "b" convention
described above to cite them in the main text.
- If you use a lot of web sources, why not set up a "links"
page on the web which your tutor can access to view them, or
simply send him/her an email which includes them as live, clickable
links? (It may not directly improve your grade, but brownie
points are always useful...)
- Ideally, there should be two lists of references at the
end of the work: one called "References" which
sets out those works cited or referred to in the text as set
out above, and another called "Bibliography", which includes:
- Your actual sources for the references. E.g. if the Mezirow article was included in a collection of articles,
although originally published in the Adult Education journal, or was cited by another author, the bibliography
should include the information about the work you actually
read, in which it was included or cited.
- Any other books or articles which you read in support
of the assignment, but did not refer to directly in the
text.
This is not always necessary when the referencing is uncomplicated.
Diagrams and pictures
- Diagrams can be very effective ways of succinctly conveying
complex information, and there is value in developing your skill
in presenting information visually, as part of your teaching,
so they may be a useful adjunct to the text.
- However, there is no need to reproduce diagrams of, say,
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or Kolb’s learning cycle, which
are already likely to be familiar to the marker.
- Diagrams may be self-explanatory to you, but they may need
a commentary for a reader coming upon them for the first time.
- Diagrams and tables should all have captions and index
numbers, usually derived from the chapter or section number
of the work, for easy and reliable reference, e.g. (see figure 2.6) or (Table
6.1)
- Generally speaking, other illustrations such as photographs
should be placed in appendices. Only use pictures which add
something to the work: clipart decoration for its own sake may
have its place in handouts, but is not appropriate here.
Plagiarism
- Plagiarism is not merely the unattributed insertion of substantial
pieces of other people's material into your work, but any attempt to pass off someone else's work as your own, and it
is a serious offence. Read the information now available in
all University libraries about it.
- Since it makes good educational sense for students to make
use of all resources available to them, including tutors, learning
support tutors, mentors and colleagues in preparing their work,
the safest course is to be punctilious about acknowledging any
assistance received. Such acknowledgement should also include
an indication of its nature, such as:
Thanks to Fiona Bountiful (Mentor)
for information on the implementation of competence-based
assessment for politicians;
and to Bill Gates for Microsoft
Word's spelling checker.
It is not usually necessary to acknowledge the lecturer him-
or herself.
Writing Style
- There is an academic convention of referring to yourself
in the third person: instead of "I interviewed...",
to say "The author (or the researcher) interviewed..."
This is sometimes clumsy and pompous, but sometimes it provides
a necessary sense of distance from the material. It is ultimately
a matter of preference, depending on the form of the dissertation.
Take advice from your supervisor, and whatever style you adopt,
be consistent.
- In any event, avoid "I think..." (and similar)
phrasing to introduce an opinion—it's amateurish. Either state
the view baldly, or if that seems too dogmatic, say something
like, "it may be argued that...", or even (in the
legal fashion) "it is submitted that..." Avoid jargon
where possible, conversational colloquialisms and cliches, and
be very careful about jokes!
- Despite this and the preceding paragraph, the passive voice
is better avoided
- Abbreviations such as 'photo', or contractions like 'isn't'
should not be used, but it is acceptable to abbreviate frequently
occurring names provided that:
- you give a list or glossary of the abbreviations used
- and/or you spell them out in full the first time you
use them, with the abbreviation following in brackets, e.g. Building Research Establishment (BRE).
- When expressing numbers in the text, those up to 12 are
usually spelled, e.g. twelve, but those over 12, dates
and currency are expressed as figures: e.g. 6,349, 17th March, 2000, £16.00,
€20.00
Non-written Submissions
- If you are submitting material on audio- or video-tape or
computer disk, then:
- Ensure that it is clearly marked with your name or ID
and the title of the module or assignment
- Use only standard VHS cassettes for video and compact
cassettes for audio, and 3.5" or CD-ROM Windows or
Macintosh disks for computer material. (Do make sure a CD-R
or CD-RW is rendered readable in an ordinary CD-ROM drive
before you submit it!)
- Sorry, but Linux is
still not mainstream for submissions: unless you are
submitting in a computer science department, ensure
that any disc is formatted in a readily-readable format
(Win32; NTFS), and use a standard and compatible file
format (.rtf, .htm, .pdf).
- Computer media submissions should include a run-time
version of the application used to generate the data, unless
you have already checked that we have access to the application.
- Enclose the media with any accompanying written material
in a plastic wallet, and note the contents when you sign
the assignment in.
- Accompany the media with a brief note of instructions
and contents, such as where to find the bits you want to
use as evidence. Devoted as the staff are, we still do not
want to plough through three hours of an E-180 video to
get at three minutes of evidence.
- CD and DVD burning packages allow you to prepare
a menu; please use this facility.
- Protect your media: break off the over-recording protection
tabs on video or audio cassettes, and slide the write-protect
tab on floppy disks. Although tutors take great care of
your work, they will not accept responsibility for their
children accidentally recording a TV programme over your
assignment!
Portfolios
- It is common on professional studies programmes to need
to submit a lot of appended supporting evidence.
- This can be put in a plastic sleeve at the back of a
project folder, but even better is a separate folder which
the marker can have open at the same time as the main text.
(If you submit more than one folder, make sure you get receipts
for all of them.)
- A clear table of contents should be supplied, and each
item clearly identified for cross-referencing with the main
text.
- Do not include things we already know about,
such as handouts from the course itself
- If there is a lot of material, it may well be worth
booking a tutorial session to go through it and get the
tutor's advice as to what to include and what to leave out.
If you use a questionnaire, for example, we do not need
every completed copy, nor every single cross-tabulation
that your statistics program has generated.
It is not that we are inclined to refuse anyone credit for
such presentational solecisms, although really sloppy presentation
implies a "couldn't care less" attitude towards the
work which may correlate positively with poor results: it is
more that you presumably want to impress us with your command
of the subject, and like yourselves we are easier to impress
if our lives as markers is not made more difficult. We listen
to what you say rather than being distracted by how you say
it.
Reference
Hilton A (1994) Dissertation Preparation and Presentation:
to BS4821:1990 and BS5605:1990 (Self-study Pack B2)
Leicester, De Montfort University and Enterprise Learning
Initiative
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