Assignments

Introduction

Many eLearning programs and courses will require that you submit assignments. In all types of assessment you will be expected to engage in critical thinking.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is often mistaken for a related, but quite distinct, sense of finding fault or being negative. However, in an learning environment, being critical means:

to be open-minded
to be intellectually skeptical about ideas, claims, and arguments
not accepting things at face value

A person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, gather relevant information, efficiently and creatively sort through this information, reason logically from this information, and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions about the world.

Essays

Successful essays require adequate planning, preparation and research. This requires you to understand:

trainer expectations
essay structure
how to plan your essays
referencing

Trainer Expectations

In general, your tutors will expect you to have:

read widely on the topic, preferably beyond the course material (eg articles, reference books, reputable websites etc)
understood what you have read
understood and discussed the main issues of the set topic
presented a clear, reasoned argument that reaches a logical conclusion

Essay Structure

Written assignments that are based on an essay format use the following structure. Click on each of the following elements of an essay to reveal what is should contain:

The introduction, body, and conclusion form the text of your essay. Together they comprise the most important aspects of your assignment.

Essay Plan

Your first step in planning an essay should be gain an understanding of what you are being asked to do by analyzing the question . This generally involves:

identifying and understand the directive words (eg examine, explain, interpret) that frame the topic or question
recognizing and understanding the key terms specific to the topic
brainstorming the topic to generate ideas and possible ways of approaching the topic.

Once you have identified the core of the question and brainstormed some ideas, you should be in a position to put together a draft plan. At this stage, you should:

read over your notes and ideas that you have accumulated during your brainstorming sessions
note down relevant headings or phrases

The aim for the moment is simply to identify the information that needs to be included, and not to worry about the order in which this will be presented. In doing this it is important to keep asking yourself the following questions:

how does this point or idea relate to the topic?
how does this help to answer the question?

After you have identified the key ideas the next step is to think about how they can fit together to make up a coherent argument, explanation, or description. This list of ideas or headings will form the body of your essay. Your final introduction and conclusion will eventually grow out of the structure and content of the body.

To maintain a focus on answering the question, it may be useful to formulate a one-sentence summary of the main claim of your essay. If you find this difficult, it may indicate that additional brainstorming is required.

Referencing

You will be required to identify and acknowledge the exact sources of any information, ideas and quotations that you have used to produce your essay.

There are four important reasons for referencing your material:

to support a specific point, claim or argument.
to give credit to the source of your ideas and avoid plagiarism
to comply with copyright law
to enable your reader to find the exact edition of the work that you consulted

The following examples illustrate one style of referencing, the Harvard Referencing system, as it applies to several different types of resource:

1. Quotations

Quotations shorter than 30 words can be integrated into the text of your essay but must be placed within single quotation marks.

In exploring this distinction, Bertels and Savage (1998, p.19) suggest that ‘…learning can be understood as a process, knowledge as a result of that process'.

Quotations that are more than 30 words are not enclosed within quotation marks. They must be set apart in the text by indenting the entire quote on the left hand side and be introduced by a colon, as in the following example:

As noted by Borghoff and Pareschi (1997):

“The knowledge movement has brought the new awareness that organizational knowledge is something inherently fluid and elusive, so inextricably linked with humans that people very often take it away once they leave the place; something that defeats being captured by rules and formulas and that comes in different shapes and forms.

2. In Text References

For in text references, always give the relevant page number(s) whenever you quote or paraphrase information found in a print source such as a journal article, book, government publication or conference proceedings. This makes it easier for someone to find the relevant passage within the publication.

A recent study (Beldon, Juniper & Marcus 2000, p.73) found...

3. Reference List

Always include a reference list at the end of your assignment detailing each work already referred to in your essay. Do not include any additional sources in this list, unless your trainer has specifically asked for a bibliography .

Works in a reference list (or bibliography) are listed in alphabetical order by author name (or by title where there is no author).

Single Author	Wenger, E. 1998, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Multiple Authors	Beldon, D, Juniper, F & Marcus, D 2000, eLearning Principles , Microsoft Press, Washington DC.
No Author	Social Marketing , 2002, Academic Press, San Diego , California.
Single Volume of a Multi-Volume Work	Lourdes , M (ed) 1999, Marketing in the internet economy , vol. 2, Handbook of marketing, Springer, Berlin.
Journal Article	Seely Brown J. and Duguid P. 1998, Organizing Knowledge, California Management Review , vol. 40. no. 3, pp. 90- 111.
Conference Paper	Meehan, J. 1999, Knowledge Management: A case of quelling the rebellion?, Critical Management Studies Conference July 1999 , Liverpool John Moores University , Liverpool.
Document on the Internet	Zimmerman, R. 1999, Social Marketing Strategies for Campus Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems , [Online], Available at: http://www.edc.org/hec/pubs/soc-marketing-strat.html [Accessed on 18 July 2000].

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