Academic English & Thesis Writing for International Students (WRIT6001)

This course is built around an online course hosted on UQ's Extend online learning platform. This online course contains a wide range of activities that will help you to learn about (and improve) your academic writing. These activities are available via WEEKLY MODULES.

IMPORTANT:

• There are a total of 13 weekly online modules available for completion from the beginning of semester. Students are advised to complete each module in sequence, on the corresponding week of the teaching semester, e.g.: Module 1 in Week 1, Module 2 in Week 2, etc.
• Each weekly online module can take between 2-4 hours to complete, depending on the week and content covered.
• Participation tracking will begin from Week 1 and end at 4:00pm on Friday of Week 13. Activities completed after this time will not count towards your online participation score. 
• Students will be able to track their online activity completion rate through the 'progress' tab in the Extend course (instructions will be provided online and in Week 1's workshop).

Criteria & Marking: Here is how the grading works for the online component:

• To be awarded full participation marks, students must complete ALL online activities (except where an activity is specific as OPTIONAL).  An online activity completion rate of between 90%-100% will result in you receiving 15% of the grade for the whole course as 'online participation’.
• An online activity completion rate of between 80%-90% will result in you receiving 10% of the grade for the whole course as 'online participation'.
• An online activity completion rate of between 70%-80% will result in you receiving 5% of the grade for the whole course as 'online participation'.
• Please note that in order to PASS WRIT6001, you must complete at least 70% of all online activities. 
• An online activity completion rate of <70% will result in a FAIL grade for the course.
• This participation score does NOT include face to face workshops - attendance for these is OPTIONAL and will NOT affect your online participation grade (although you are strongly encouraged to attend).

Your completion of these activities is tracked by the course coordinator, and your score will reflect the extent of your completion of the following activity types:

• PROBLEM QUESTIONS (Multiple choice, dropdown menu, checkboxes, etc.).
• COMPLETION OF VIDEOS (entire video must be watched).
• DISCUSSION FORUMS (following all accompanying instructions).
• PEER INSTRUCTION QUESTION (including meeting minimum character count for replies).
• DRAG AND DROP activities.
• CIRRUS ANNOTATION TASKS (see online modules for instructions).

IMPORTANT: You do not have to get all activities CORRECT - you only have to COMPLETE the activities (it is OK to provide incorrect answers, although you will have the opportunity to revise your answers upon receiving feedback).

Generative AI & MT Statement

This task has been designed to be challenging, authentic and complex. Whilst students may use AI and/or MT technologies, successful completion of assessment in this course will require students to critically engage in specific contexts and tasks for which artificial intelligence will provide only limited support and guidance. A failure to reference generative AI or MT use may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct. To pass this assessment, students will be required to demonstrate detailed comprehension of their written submission independent of AI and MT tools.

Select two papers that are examples of excellent and important work in your discipline / research area. You may ask your advisor or another expert for recommendations. Choose journal articles (not books). 

Then, select one paper that is clearly outside of your discipline / research area. For example, if you are in Arts & Humanities, select 2 A&H papers and 1 Physical Science paper. If you are in the Physical Sciences, choose 2 PS papers and 1 Social Sciences paper, etc.

Then, complete BOTH A) AND B) BELOW

PLEASE WRITE IN PARAGRAPHS (NOT BULLET POINTS)

A) Individual reviews of research papers (500 words for each paper = 1500 words total)

• Give the full reference of the work in the style typically used in your discipline
• Write a short paragraph outlining the key points/findings of the paper (no more than 100 words).
• For the two papers from your discipline - Explain what you can learn about writing in your discipline by reading these papers. Questions you need to ask yourself are:
• How do I know these are papers from my disciplinary area?
• What is special about the structure and language features of these papers that tell you that these papers are from your disciplinary area (and not another area)
• What referencing style is used?
• Do they make particular use of quotes, data, charts, statistics, etc.?
• What is the general tone (academic/general), level of formality (formal/informal), use of author intrusion (e.g. self-mention) as well as reader engagement (e.g. attitude markers)?
• What kind of claims do the authors make, and how do they make them? Are they generally strong claims? Do they tend to make more cautious claims?
• For the paper from outside of your discipline - Explain what you can learn about writing in that discipline by reading this paper. Questions you need to ask yourself are:
• How do I know this is not a paper from my disciplinary area?
• What is special about the structure and language features of the paper? Can you describe them?
• What referencing style is used?
• Does it make particular use of quotes, data, charts, statistics, etc.?
• What is the general tone (academic/general), level of formality (formal/informal), use of author intrusion (e.g. self-mention) as well as reader engagement (e.g. attitude markers)?
• What kind of claims do the authors make, and how do they make them? Are they generally strong claims? Do they tend to make more cautious claims?

 B) Comparative essay

Essay of between 750–1000 words that does the following:

• Summarise how the writing in the two papers from your discipline is different from the writing in the paper outside of your discipline. You need to demonstrate that as a result of reading these papers and analysing them, that you are fully aware of disciplinary writing practices. Don't just repeat the information from A) above.
• Reflect on how your new knowledge of disciplinary writing practices has changed the way you think about writing for your discipline in the future. You should explain:
• Was there something you were doing in your writing before that was not appropriate for writing in your discipline?
• What is the most important thing you are going to change for your writing in the future as a result of doing this assessment?

Submit to the Turnitin link in the Assessment folder on Blackboard. Submit A and B in the SAME FILE.

Generative AI & MT Statement

This task has been designed to be challenging, authentic and complex. Whilst students may use AI and/or MT technologies, successful completion of assessment in this course will require students to critically engage in specific contexts and tasks for which artificial intelligence will provide only limited support and guidance. A failure to reference generative AI or MT use may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct. To pass this assessment, students will be required to demonstrate detailed comprehension of their written submission independent of AI and MT tools.

Students will video-record a presentation based on what they intend to write for their final mini-research paper (the topic for the two assessments should ideally be the same, and tutors' approval must be sought where it is quite different).

The presentations will be recorded as a full video which shows your face in full screen (No PPTs are allowed). You may use any video recording software you wish as long as you have access to the original video file for upload. These videos must be uploaded to Blackboard, and instructions will be provided in that folder and by your tutor prior to the deadline.

You should refer to the literature where relevant in your presentation, please prepare a separate reference list in a Word or PDF document and upload it to the same folder where you will submit your video.

This assessment is worth 20 marks.

1. At the START of the video, you must talk to the camera (i.e. NOT a photograph) and introduce yourself clearly showing your UQ ID card on FULL SCREEN. If you do not have a UQ ID card, please use a passport or valid Australian driver’s license with your name in English. If the marker cannot see your ID clearly, your video will be considered not submitted. (In the Sample Video Presentation below, the student's ID was blurred to protect their details, but in your video submission, you must show your ID clearly).
2. Presentations must be under 5 minutes - submissions significantly longer will have marks deducted.
3. ALWAYS check your UQ email before and after submission of assessments, as this is the only way we have to contact you if there is a problem.

Generative AI & MT Statement

This assessment task evaluates students' abilities, skills and knowledge without the aid of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Translation (MT). Students are advised that the use of AI or MT technologies to develop responses is strictly prohibited and may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.

Drawing on the knowledge you have gained from the WRIT6001 course content, you will produce (A) a mini-research paper of 1500 words and (B) a Video Reflection no longer than 5 minutes.

A. IMRD Paper

The paper will be in the IMRD format - Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The mini-research paper is on a topic of your choice, although it should be a real academic topic, and should be from your own discipline. It should match (as closely as possible) the topic you did for your video presentation assessment.

You do not have to collect data or find participants - you can make up/pretend you have the participants for your methods section, and the data for your results section.

You must include appropriate citations and references for your 'paper'.  Referencing format should the one primarily used in your discipline - e.g. APA, Chicago, MLA, Harvard - you will need to check with your disciplinary tutors about which format is used in your discipline. References do not count as part of the word count.

Upload this document via Turnitin using the link in the relevant 'assessment' folder. 

Your written assessment must be new work that you have written this semester. Do not submit previously completed work.

The IMRD paper should be no longer than 1,500 words.

This part of the assessment is worth 20 marks (out of 35).

B. Video Reflection

You must produce a Video Reflection explaining how you drew upon the knowledge gained from the WRIT6001 course content to construct and complete your written mini research paper, and how you will transfer and apply this knowledge to your writing in the future. 

The presentations will be recorded as a full video which shows your face in full screen (No PPTs are allowed). You may use any video recording software you wish as long as you have access to the original video file for upload. These videos must be uploaded to Blackboard, and instructions will be provided in that folder and by your tutor prior to the deadline.

1. At the START of the video, you must talk to the camera (i.e. NOT a photograph) and introduce yourself clearly showing your UQ ID card on FULL SCREEN. If you do not have a UQ ID card, please use a passport or valid Australian driver’s license with your name in English. If the marker cannot see your ID clearly, your video will be considered not submitted.
2. Presentations must be under 5 minutes - submissions significantly longer will have marks deducted.
3. ALWAYS check your UQ email before and after submission of assessments, as this is the only way we have to contact you if there is a problem.

This part of the assessment is worth 15 marks (out of 35). However, students who do not upload a video will automatically FAIL this assessment. No AI use allowed for the video presentation.

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DETAILED UPLOAD INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Submit Word or PDF file of research paper to the link on a Blackboard folder under Assessment.
2. Upload video reflection in the same folder on Blackboard.

Generative AI & MT Statement

This task has been designed to be challenging, authentic and complex. Whilst students may use AI and/or MT technologies, successful completion of assessment in this course will require students to critically engage in specific contexts and tasks for which artificial intelligence will provide only limited support and guidance. A failure to reference generative AI or MT use may constitute student misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct. To pass this assessment, students will be required to demonstrate detailed comprehension of their written submission independent of AI and MT tools.