Assignment Submission

ALL written assignments (tutorial submission, essay) will be submitted via Turnitin.

You are required to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated in the University Examination Timetable. The only exception to sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption. In these circumstances, please consult University Policy for the available procedure.

Extensions

ALL deadlines are firm unless an extension has been requested in writing one (1) week before the due date. A penalty for lateness will apply unless a doctor's certificate is supplied. No written work will be accepted for assessment after the end of Week 13. 5% of credit will be deducted for the first day assignments are submitted late without an extension and thereafter 2% of credit will be deducted per day for assignments submitted late without an extension. If an assessment task is more than two (2) weeks late, students will need the permission of the unit convenor before submitting the task. Tasks more than two (2) weeks late, without extension or convenor permission, will not be marked. Assignments handed in early will not be marked and returned before the due date. Always retain a copy of work you submit in case it is lost in the online system.

Weekly Readings

There is no textbook for this unit. Readings for the tutorials and seminars will be made available on the unit iLearn site, and will also be available in a print-on-demand book of readings from MUSE.

If students wish to have a readable and informative narrative of the historical themes on which this unit focuses, I recommend Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London: Penguin, 2006 [new edition]). Students are not required to purchased this book.

Frequent recourse will be made to the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, the first ever work of ‘Christian History’, written at the close of the period this course deals with. A modern translation of this work is published in Penguin Classics: Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trans. G.A. Williamson (London & New York, 1989). Students who wish to purchase this will find it useful, but a perfectly reasonable translation is also available on-line, at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.html.

Technology Used

The unit has an iLearn page which can be accessed at https://ilearn.mq.edu.au. PC and internet access are therefore required. Basic computer skills (e.g., internet browsing) and skills in word processing are also a requirement. Content, readings, and discussions for this unit will be delivered via the unit iLearn page. The lectures for this unit will be recorded and the audio recordings and accompanying slides will be available on the Echo 360 system. The Webinars will also be placed in the Learn page. Readings will be available via the library and the unit iLearn site, where other digital resources will also be placed.

Lectures

There will one one-hour lecture per week, (recorded live, on Fridays at 9-10).

Webinars

There will be a weekly "webinar", in which I will record a short video with accompanying powerpoint. After the webinar there will be a space for online discussion of the issues I have raised: these will be important issues about how and why we study history, and I hope you will all contribute to the discussion of them. Participation in the webinar discussions is optional, but I hope you engage in them, as students who do will perform much better in the unit and have improved learning outcomes.

Online Tutorial Discussion Forum

As well as the webinar discussions, there will be online weekly discussion which focus on the content of the history we are discussing. I will start these discussion with a set of questions about the weekly readings, and hope you all participate in them.  You are required to participate in each week's discussion to gain a full mark of 10/10 for the participation component of the assessment. To avoid pressure and people simply rattling off short bullet point answers to the questions, I am not marking the standard or length of posts to the bulletin board, just participation itself. Thus, any participation is fine: the aim is to discuss the ancient sources and how to interpret them. I hope you use these discussions as an opportunity to talk through the issues we're raising and the content we're addressing. Do not simply answer the questions which are asked each week in point form: they should be seen as starting points for discussion, not questions to be answered. I am looking for opinions and analysis, not merely facts. Contributions which make, in prose form, a personal and reasoned response to the topic under discusison that week are much better than reponses which simply provide short "answers" to the questions posted at the start of the week.

For a week-by-week overview of the content we will cover in the lectures, seminars, and tutorials, see the unit iLearn site.

Since the previous offering in 2013, the structure of the unit, some assessment, and some lecture content have been adjusted.

Bibliography

A general unit bibliography,  as well as  readings relating to each week's topic, may be found on the unit iLearn page.

Tutorials

A guide to the weekly online discussions may be found on unit iLearn site.

In order to complete the unit satisfactorily students must gain a mark of 50% or more overall and undertake all assessment tasks.