Seminar Participation.

Worth 10%

You are expected to attend every seminar in this unit – absences must be documented (for example, with a medical certificate). Participation means not only doing all the readings beforehand but contributing to discussion with your fellow students during our meeting. Your grade is assessed on the basis of your generosity with your knowledge to other students and your willingness to ask relevant questions and to have a go at trying to answer others’ questions. Simply turning up registers no marks at all. External students have to be especially active in this seminar-based subject. We have high expectations of all of you. You have to commit the same amount of time as internal students to your seminar participation. You are expected to post at least 250 words to the discussion forum every week, and to engage in a conversation with your fellow external students - re-post in reply to others as discussions progress. External students will also be required to participate in at least one webinar during the course of semester.

Worth 15%

Due: Monday, 31 August, 2015 by 5 pm

Word length: 1200 words

Write a 1200-word proposal for your Research Project. Look now at the instructions for the Research Project (assessment task 4). Your proposal should include the following components under appropriate headings:

1.   A prospective title for your research project (it does not matter if the title changes as the project proceeds): titles are important, they signpost the argument or contents of an essay.

2.   The research question that you have devised. Note that this must be a question, not a vague topic, because your eventual project will be marked according to the question you have designed.

3.   Discussion of how you will approach the project, explaining what sources you will use and why they are useful as well as what issues you will focus on and why these are significant (this section will come to around 800-1000 words). Include short answers to the following questions:

a)   What is my topic about (include period & place but also specific historical field, such as ‘media history’ or ‘political history’)?

b)   What are my main sources (are they accessible and why are they useful)?

c)    Who are the major historians working in my field (and when did their work appear)?

d)   What other concepts will I need to understand in order to explore this topic properly (e.g. gender, race, national identity)

4.   An annotated bibliography of five of the most relevant secondary sources for researching your project. (Your final research essay will of course require more than five sources! This section will come to around 200-400 words.) If you are not sure about what an annotated bibliography is, have a look at the following website: http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/anno_bib.pdf).

This assessment task is an important scaffold for the larger Research Project. It assesses your ability to select a research area, refine a research question, and identify appropriate forms and sources of evidence for your research question.

Seminar Presentation

Worth: 10%

Due: Week 9

Duration: 5 minutes (strictly!)

Present a 5-minute presentation to the class about one key piece of evidence used in your research. You will need to outline briefly the topic and then question of the Research Project. You will then need to introduce the piece of evidence and explain why it is significant. You should tell us how you came across it, what it reveals to you, what other sources it relates to or sheds light upon, as well as something about its limitations. You will be assessed on your ability to present clearly and engagingly, and your ability to edit content to the required timeframe. This assessment task is designed to assess your oral communication skills, and your ability to organise and deliver information in non-written formats. As you are all working on different subjects, this will be a wonderful opportunity to hear about everyone’s discoveries and special interests. You should use a presentation tool like PowerPoint, Keynote or Prezi to deliver your presentation. You will be expected to be able to answer audience questions afterwards.

NB No electronic devices are allowed to be in operation during student presentations. Audience members should ask at least one question per presenter.

Due: Friday, 23 October, 2015, 7pm

Word Length: 4000 words

Write a 4,000 word research essay on the question proposed in your Proposal. The Research Project is the major assessment task in this unit. It must address an original research question. It should develop the means to answer the research question, using relevant primary and secondary sources. Conducting original research is central to the project. The seminars of the unit are intended to scaffold your development as a research historian, in conjunction with consultations with Modern History staff and the Capstone convenors. You will work with one member of staff in particular on your project, and you should aim to consult with them at least four times during the research and writing.

Remember that your Research Project needs:

1.   a title

2.   an appropriate research question

3.   an answer to the research question via an analysis of primary sources within a context of wider secondary reading

4.   a complete bibliography, starting on a fresh page, styled in accordance with the Modern History Citation Guide

NB: When you submit the unit project, you must also complete and attach the self-assessment form, which will be available for download from the iLearn site.

History in Practice

Worth: 15%

Due: Monday 9th November, 2015, 5pm (commentaries due by Thursday 12th November 2015, 9pm)

Word length: 800 words + two short commentaries

Transform your Research Project into an 800-word blog post that captures the principal aims and conclusion of the project in a style accessible to a broad audience. The aim of this task is to assess your ability to communicate your research beyond an academic audience, and to imagine the broader application for your work after university. Most of you will eventually take your history skills into a range of occupations (such as teaching, museum work, the public service, policy and government work, filmmaking). This task is designed to give you practice at formulating your ideas for diverse audiences. Imagine you are writing a piece about your research for a website like The Conversation (http://theconversation.edu.au/), which aims to encourage academics to write about their research in accessible ways, so that they can contribute to current political, scientific, cultural and technological debates. The task consists of two actions:

1.   Compose and post your blog to Capstone unit blog: Making History at Macquarie (Blog URL will be announced during the session). You can read the posts from last year’s students to familiarize yourself with the tone and style required. This must be done by Monday 9th November.

2.   You will also be required to post short comments on at least two other pieces of student work from 2015 on the blog. These must appear by Thursday 12th November 2015, 9pm.

This assignment offers you the opportunity to be creative, to think about your research in a different way, to foreground the audience for your work, and to test your skills of public, professional writing. You should—as always—take care to provide acknowledgement to your sources wherever necessary. But, given the nature of the task, you should avoid footnotes in favor of less formal attribution, for example, “Historian Edward Muir, in The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance (2007), claimed...” or by providing a hyperlink to online sources.