Assessment

This has the details of the assessment. If something here disagrees with a slide, this page is correct.

What you write

• A Wikipedia article on a topic okayed by the lecturer, drafted in your sandbox and moved to mainspace, plus feedback on other students' articles. Pavel's sessions cover how.
• A short academic paper (4–8 pages plus references — the reference list does not count towards the length) on a topic okayed by the lecturer, plus feedback on other students' papers. It does not have to be the same topic as your Wikipedia article.

We focus on environmental issues in the writing practice. Both articles are due on 15 January: submit the paper in Moodle, and have a complete article in Wikipedia.

Sub-tasks

There are several sub-tasks on the way to the paper. They are not all marked, but you must complete them all ON TIME to graduate.

1. A topic, and three references: the question you want your paper to answer, plus three sources you have actually found, one line each. This is a feasibility check, not a bibliography: if you cannot find three things to read, you need a different topic.
   Time: about 1 hour — longer if the first topic does not survive, which is the point of doing it now.
   Deliverable: upload to Moodle before the first writing session, 6 October — we work on your own topics in that class, so bring it with you.
2. Three paragraphs on water use in data centres — read the three texts and say what each claims, where they differ, and which you trusted most.
   Time: 2–3 hours — about an hour reading, an hour writing.
   Deliverable: upload to Moodle by Sunday 11 October, and bring a printed copy to class on 13 October — you will swap it with a classmate that day.
3. Annotated bibliography: five or more sources in APA 7, with two or three sentences on each saying what it shows, how far you trust it, and what you will use it for.
   Time: 3–4 hours — finding and skimming the sources is most of it.
   Deliverable: upload to Moodle by the FAIR session, 27 October, and have it with you in class that day, on paper or on screen — we work from it.
4. A complete draft, formatted as described below.
   Time: 12–18 hours — the big one. Reading your sources properly is half of it. Do not start in December.
   Deliverable: post in the Peer review: papers forum in Moodle before the peer review workshop on 8 December, and bring a printed copy to class. Without a draft you cannot take part, and the people reviewing you have nothing to read.
5. Peer review: you will be allocated two drafts.
   Time: 2–3 hours — about an hour per draft to read it and write something useful.
   Deliverable: reply in each of the two forum threads by 15 December. The written feedback is marked — see how it is marked.
   • Reviews are open: your name is on them and the whole class can read them, as on a Wikipedia talk page. That is deliberate — you learn as much from reading other people's reviews as from writing your own.
   • So drafts are visible to your classmates too. Nothing leaves the course.
6. The paper itself: revise in the light of the reviews you were given.
   Time: 4–6 hours.
   Deliverable: upload the final paper to Moodle by 15 January.

Altogether that is roughly 25–35 hours of your own time across the semester, on top of the classes — about two hours a week, with peaks at the draft and the revision. The course is 5 ECTS, so the Wikipedia article and the reading account for the rest.

The paper, in detail

Write a short academic paper (4–8 pages plus references) on a sustainability-related topic (preferably local). This complements your Wikipedia assignment by practicing academic voice, structure, and argumentation.

How it is marked

Regular attendance and active participation are a necessary condition for passing: you have to come to class, or have a good reason not to. They carry no percentage of their own.

The mark itself is made up as follows. Both the article and the paper are due on 15 January:

• A Wikipedia article on a topic to be okayed by the lecturer
  • Your own article (35%)
  • Feedback on other students' articles (15%)
• A research paper on a topic to be okayed by the lecturer --- does not have to be the same as the wikipedia article (4–8 pages plus references — the reference list does not count towards the length), with references in APA style
  • Your own paper (35%)
  • Feedback on other students' papers (15%)

Citing your sources: APA

Your paper should use APA style, 7th edition: author–date citations in the text, and an alphabetical reference list at the end. Pick one style and be consistent — that is what these references, and the ones on this page, are doing. (Wikipedia has its own citation templates instead; Pavel covers those.)

• APA Style and Grammar Guidelines — the official reference. Start with the reference examples, which show how to cite every kind of source, and the rules for in-text citations.
• Two free one-page handouts worth printing: the reference guide for journal articles, books and book chapters (PDF) and the in-text citation checklist (PDF).
• Purdue OWL: APA formatting and style guide — a gentler walk-through, with sample papers.
• Zotero — a free reference manager that will format APA for you. Check what it produces: it is only as good as the metadata you feed it.

The manual itself, cited in the style it defines:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Using AI

You are here to practise writing, so the writing must be your own: do not use generative AI to write your paper or your Wikipedia article. You may use it for research --- explaining a concept, suggesting search terms, pointing you towards literature --- as long as you say so. Name the tool and the version, and what you used it for, for example:

Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) was used to suggest search terms. All sources were located, read, and cited by me.

This includes proofreading. Most of you are writing in a second or third language, and a model would happily rewrite your sentences into fluent, anonymous English. That is the part you are here to learn, and we would be marking the model. A spell-checker is fine; so is a dictionary. If you want help with the language, ask us, bring it to the peer-review session, or take it to the university's writing support --- all of which will teach you something a rewrite would not.

What a model tells you is a lead, not a source: find the original, read it, and cite that. Undisclosed use counts as academic misconduct.