On-line quizzes on lectures

After each lecture a quiz will open to make sure you have read and understood the lecture material. The quizzes will be available on-line through the iLearn system (see “Quizzes” section in each module of  iLearn) and together are worth 10% of the unit mark. You will do these in your own time, open book, and they will be open until 23:59 on the following Sunday (5 days to do each of them). The question order will be forced and random, there will be a time limit of 30 mins on the lecture quizzes, and you only get one go. The 10% mark will be derived by summing all the lecture quizzes and normalising.

Practicals

A very important component of GEOS309 are the practicals. These are for 3 hours, and enable several of the topics to be dealt with in greater depth. The mode of presentation of these practicals will vary considerably week to week. Some weeks, it will be a more tutorial format, with group work and discussion; for example, the coal-bed methane short course, and peak oil discussion. Other weeks they will be more practically and hands-on oriented. Some weeks you will be working on computers, other times on microscopes or virtual microscopes, or hard copy work sheets. The petroleum system practical will be assessed using a submitted written text, this will be submitted using turnitin. You will be given specific details of what is expected for the practical assessment when you begin each section of the class. Please bring pencils, pens, coloured pencils and a ruler to the practicals.

Assignments

You will be given specific details of what is expected for the two assignments when you begin each section of the class. Generally, the assignments will involve a written report, in which your use of English and referencing the source of your ideas is important. The assignments will be released to you on iLearn on the date shown, and on the date shown will be discussed during the practicals.

The two assignments are essay based, so skill at writing essays is important. Each assignment topic must be fully researched and the essay written in your own words. Cutting and pasting information from web pages is NOT acceptable. Information you do obtain from other sources (brief quotes, images, ideas) must be fully referenced in the text (author, year), with references listed at the end of the essay (year, author, title, journal or link). See later in the handout for sections on academic honesty and referencing. Students who fail in these fundamental principles and basic skills may score zero for assignments. All assignments are to be typed, and will be submitted for turnitin checking and grademark assessment through iLearn. You will not need to produce hard copy of these two assignments. The assignments will be due on Mondays at 9am.

The unit will be presented in 3 broad themes:

Theme 1: The Petroleum system. Conventional oil and gas. Source rocks, thermal maturation, generation, expulsion, migration, seals, reservoir rocks, organic geochemistry, oil biodegradation, timing of charge.

Theme 2: Unconventional energy resources. Coal bed methane (coal seam gas), shale gas, CO₂ sequestration.

Theme 3: Basin analysis and sequence stratigraphy. Principles of basin analysis, time stratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy. Geothermal energy and forecast for oil and gas supply for next 30 years.

Classes and contact hours:

Attend the one hour lecture, and the three hour practical each week.

Lecture:  E8A 386 Tutorial Rm, Wednesdays 10:00-11:00.

Practicals: E5A 210, Wednesday, 15:00-18:00.

It is the policy in this unit that internal students will normally attend the lecture and a practical each week, and will make their own notes from the lectures. It is expected that many of the lectures will be interactive, with questions and answers throughout. Lectures will be recorded using Echo 360, and files of the lecture graphics will also be made available through iLearn. These will be particularly useful for revision purposes. Several of the practicals are assessed; it is important that you attend the practicals each week.

This unit can be seen as an interconnected stream between lectures and practicals. We may choose to have a short lecture or two within the three hour practical. The lecture stream will give a broad overview of the topics, provide background information and introduce new ideas and concepts that link in with the practical stream.

Late Enrolments

If you enrol late in the unit, you will have already missed one or more lectures. It is your responsibility to catch up. Also, you will still be expected to submit all assignments within the remaining time.

Hours

This is a 3 credit point unit. It is anticipated that you will spend >9 hours per week involved with the unit, including the four hour class contact time per week, and approximately four to five hours per week doing home study. It is particularly important that you spend plenty of time preparing the two assignments.

GEOS309 prize and PESA

The Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (PESA) prize for proficiency in the unit GEOS309 Sediments, Liquid Fuels And Energy Security (value $500) is awarded annually to the best performing student on GEOS309. Consider joining PESA. It is free for students, only $11 for lunchtime talks, there is the possibility of scholarships, and great networking!  Simon can sponsor you as a PESA financial member. https://www.pesa.com.au/

Readings and Textbook (free)

• Petroleum Geoscience: From Sedimentary Environments to Rock Physics
• Knut Bjorlykke
• SBN: 978-3-642-02331-6 (Print) 978-3-642-02332-3 (Online)
• http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-02332-3/page/1 - section=780498&page=1&locus=0
• This book is free to download as .pdf chapters for Macquarie University students. I strongly advise that you do so in the first week of class. You may have difficulties if you try to do this at home, unless you properly authenticate onto the Mac Uni library site. DO NOT pay money for this book! You can easily download it for free in our library!

Web pages and electronic resources

The main unit web page is on iLearn:  https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/login/MQ/

iLearn is Macquarie's learning management system. Assignments, hand-outs, reading material and on-line quizzes will be available here.

iLearn Communication Tools: The unit iLearn page includes three messaging tools, the Announcements tool, the General Discussions forum and the Dialogue tool. In the Announcements Forum, the teaching staff will make unit-wide announcements. These will mostly concern administrative matters (Please note: Students cannot post in this forum). All participants are subscribed to this forum and will automatically receive email notification of these important announcements. The General Discussions forum is used for messages that either everyone enrolled or selected groups in an online unit can read. Students and teaching staff can post and reply to these messages. The Dialogue tool is used for private messages between you, your lecturer and students in a unit. It is suggested that you check for new discussion and mail messages at least once every few days.

Sound recordings and pdf files of the lectures: Sound recordings and video display capture will be available from the link in iLearn (on right hand side of page) to the Echo 360 site. Pdf files of each lecture will be available for download from the iLearn site, 1-2 days before each lecture. These will be in the section “GEOS309 lectures” under each Module, and will be available as pdf files in 2 formats: (1) colour, 1 page per slide, not suitable for printing, but ideal for looking at on your computer; and (2) black & white, 3 slides per page (these are good for printing to bring to lectures).

Turnitin Procedure for the two assignments and the pracs

1. Turnitin links have been placed under Themes 1 and 2 on the iLearn page for GEOS309. There are also links in the “Activities” box on the right hand side of the iLearn page.

2. For each assignment or practical when it is due, click the corresponding link, then click “Submit Paper”.

3. Submission type is preset to file upload for your assignment. You link to a local file for upload (only one file can be uploaded). Select your name, and write or paste in the assignment title.

4. Note: graphics are not checked and can be left in uploaded files. We suggest you keep graphics small, the maximum upload size is 200 Mb. The reference list is also not checked, so can be left in. When you click to submit, you are declaring that it is your own work (no cover sheet is needed).

Grademark is a paperless grading system whereby your assignments will be submitted online and marked by staff online, and feedback will be given online via electronic comments, custom marks and even by voice comments. The staff/tutors marking will be provided with the exact time and date of submission, an overlay of the assignment, and access to the originality checker (via the Turnitin software). Your resulting grades and feedback can be found at the same link in iLearn after the post date.

For help or more detailed instructions on turnitin:

http://turnitin.com/en_us/support/help-center

We will endeavour to return marked assignments and practical to you within 14-21 days of submission. If at any time you have reason to query an assignment mark, please contact Prof. Simon George by phone or email to arrange a meeting.

Illness and Extensions

If you want consideration for illness when submitting any assignments or practicals, you MUST submit a Disruption to Studies form online through the link from here:

http://students.mq.edu.au/student_admin/exams/disruption_to_studies/

If you want to apply for an extension, you should EMAIL Prof. Simon George BEFORE THE DUE DATE of the assignment or practical and state the reason you are seeking an extension. This will not be granted automatically, but will be considered on a case-by-case basis, based on Disruption to Studies or other information. You will be notified by return email as to when you will need to submit your assignment. LATE PENALTIES (loss of marks) will apply for work that is late where no extension has been granted: it is a 5% per day penalty for late work (i.e. 1/20 of the marks allocated to the exercise will be deducted for each day that the work is late).

Referencing

It is important that you understand how to correctly reference the information you do use, as often you will want to legitimately quote material or ideas from other sources. Information obtained from any source, including the Internet, is covered by copyright law. You must acknowledge any source that you refer to in your assignment, both within the text of your assignment, and at the end of it (by including a list of references). Referencing your sources also enables the reader to view your sources and follow your essay. Academic conventions and copyright law require that you acknowledge when you use the ideas of others. In most cases, this means stating which book or journal article is the source of an idea or quotation.

There are two aspects to learn: in-text references and a list of references cited. Please note that for both the GEOS309 assignments, we insist that you reference using in-text references, with a reference list at the end (ie, not with footnotes). This is a common way to do it in many areas of science (but not all!), and it reminds you and indicates to the reader what the source is and how old it is. For GEOS309, please use the Harvard Style of referencing.

There is much information on in-text references and referencing of print and non-print sources available at:

http://libguides.mq.edu.au/content.php?pid=459099&sid=3778407

http://libguides.mq.edu.au/content.php?pid=459099&sid=3759396

How to cite references within the text of an assignment:

These are also called in-text references. When you use another's ideas you should immediately acknowledge your sources, including in figure or table captions. Always give the surname of the author and the date of publication. Use the author-date method of citation for quotations and paraphrasing. Note spelling of et al. (used when 3 or more authors; please remember the fullstop). Note that the in text refs don’t have author initials.

Direct quote: Brown et al. (1990, p. 12) conclude that ‘the depth to the Moho under the oceans is less than under the continents’. Note that for a direct quote the page must be cited.

General acknowledgement of the source of information: “As explained by George and Osborne (2010), biomarkers in fluid inclusions…..”

More specific reference but not a direct quote: “The distribution of Martian volcanism in the highlands (Johnson, 2011) can be used to infer… etc.” 

More general reference to sources: “Most older textbooks in geology (e.g. Peters et al., 1941; Stamp 1938) either ignored the deep ocean basin deposition or……”

Website in text: “Details about PhD scholarships are available from the Macquarie University web site <http://www.hdr.mq.edu.au/>.”

How to create a list of references:

At the end of your assignment, create a list of the references you have cited in the text. Arrange this in alphabetical order of author’s surnames. The author's surname is placed first, followed by initials or first name, then other authors the same way, and then the year of publication is given. Where an item doesn't have an author, arrange it by its title.

Then the reference needs the paper or book title, journal (if it's a journal article), publisher (if it's a book) or url and date accessed (if it's a web page). The format should follow the Harvard style as described in these links: it is a good guide, and your references should contain the same information.

Please be very careful (a) to put in the reference list every citation from the text (including web sites) and any figure/table captions, and (b) to not put in the list references that you have not cited in the text or figure/table captions.

Reference examples: journal

George, S.C., Volk, H., Dutkiewicz, A., Ridley, J. and Buick, R. (2008) Preservation of hydrocarbons and biomarkers in oil trapped inside fluid inclusions for >2 billion years. Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta 72, 844-870.

George, S.C. (1993) Black sandstones in the Midland Valley of Scotland: thermally metamorphosed hydrocarbon reservoirs? Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Science 84, 61-72.

Bourdet, J., Eadington, P., Volk, H., George, S.C., Pironon, J., Kempton, R. (2012) Chemical changes of fluid inclusion oil trapped during the evolution of an oil reservoir: Jabiru-1A case study (Timor Sea, Australia). Marine and Petroleum Geology 36, 118-139.

Ahmed, M. and George, S.C. (2004) Changes in the molecular composition of crude oils during their preparation for GC and GC–MS analyses. Organic Geochemistry 35, 137-155.

Abbassi, S., di Primio, R., Horsfield, B., Volk, H., Edwards, D.S., Anka, Z., George, S.C. (2015) On the filling and leakage of petroleum from traps in the Laminaria High region of the northern Bonaparte Basin, Australia. Marine and Petroleum Geology 59, 91-113.

Reference example: book

Peters, K. E., Walters, C. C. and Moldowan, J. M. (2005) The Biomarker Guide, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1155 pp.

Reference example: chapters in edited books

George, S.C., Volk, H., Dutkiewicz, A., 2012. Mass spectrometry techniques for analysis of oil and gas trapped in fluid inclusions. In: Lee, M.S. (Ed.), Handbook of Mass Spectrometry, Wiley, pp. 647-673.

George, S. C., Volk, H., Ahmed, M., Middleton, H., Allan, T. and Holland, D. (2004) Novel petroleum systems in Papua New Guinea indicated by terpane and methylhopane distributions. In: Boult, P. J., Johns, D. R. and Lang, S. C. (Eds), Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium II, Adelaide, 19–22 September, Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia, Special Publication, pp. 575-588.

Reference example (web site, author and date known):

Wright, S. 2004, Open area test site (OATS) development, undergraduate project, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, viewed 27 March 2011, <http://eprints.usq.edu.au/archive/00000047>.

Reference example (web site, author and date not known):

Macquarie University, NSW, viewed 12 January 2012, <http://www.hdr.mq.edu.au/>

Changes since the GEOS309 2015 offering

There is a different weighting of assignments, practicals and the exam, and the lecture and practical order has been changed.