General Assessment Information

Assessment for this unit consists of a mixture of quizzes, a written assignment, a short test and a final exam. A team-based practical project will be organised late in the semester if circumstances permit (this will depend upon the rules that prevail in late October for prac teaching). Submission of all assessments and completion of all tests is essential for adequate progress, since all assessment tasks are required to master the content of this unit. Most importantly, it will be essential to keep pace with the quizzes, as marks accrue weekly throughout the semester.

HURDLE: The final exam is a hurdle for this unit. Students must achieve a mark of at least 40% in the final exam to pass the unit. Students who fail to achieve this hurdle on the first attempt, but demonstrate a 'serious attempt' by achieving a mark of at least 30%, will be given a second attempt to cross the 40% hurdle in a supplementary final exam. Students who achieve or surpass the hurdle on the second attempt will obtain a mark of 40%. The final mark will then be calculated from the in-semester grade (out of 65 marks) and the final exam (out of 35 marks).  An overall mark of 50% is the minimum required to pass the unit.

All assessments will be graded and we aim to have marks available within three weeks of the assessment due date. Marks will be available on Gradebook in iLearn. Feedback on the written assignment will be provided through Turnitin when the marks are released.

Weekly ‘lecture’ quizzes:

Questions will be inserted into the lecture slides each week, based on the lecture material. Quizzes will be open on iLearn each week from Tuesday (the day after each week's lectures are loaded) and close the following Sunday at midnight. Once you start the quiz you have up to 15 minutes to complete it and you are only allowed one attempt. These questions are designed to ensure that you have some familiarity with the lecture material and should be completed ideally before the practicals so you have the best opportunity to learn from the practical exercises. They do not require a deep understanding of the lecture material. There are a total of 12 weekly quizzes, starting in Week 2. The quizzes will be automatically marked and the marks and correct answers will be released once submissions have been completed.

Practical quizzes:

These quiz questions will be based on the material covered in the external practical sessions. Questions will be available on iLearn at some time during the practical sessions; have your internet access ready. Answers must be submitted online during the practical session and you are only allowed one attempt. These questions are designed to test your understanding of the practical exercises but are very simple and do not require interpretation of the data. There are a total of 8 practical quizzes (each with multiple questions). Multiple-choice answers will be entered online and quizzes will be automatically marked and the marks will be available immediately.

Online preparatory skills: There will be various supplementary materials offered to help you gain confidence in areas of uncertainty. This applies especially to chemistry and statistics.

Written assignment:

Students will choose from a list of topics provided in Week 4. The topics are designed to cover a wide range and for each topic, two recent publications will be provided. These papers are the source for your assignment work but more references should be used to support your arguments. Write (up to) a 1000-word report which will be submitted through Turnitin. The write-up will be divided into three distinct questions to direct you: (a) what did the papers report? (b) are they a sound piece of research? (c) what would you do as a follow-up experiment? A rubric which outlines the assessment criteria will be made available on iLearn.

This report is due by 11:59 pm Monday 9 Oct 2020 (end of Week 9) and must be submitted through the Turnitin link in iLearn (no hardcopy is required). Students are reminded that Turnitin is plagiarism-checking software and all assignments must comply with the Academic Honesty Policy of the university, which you can read at: http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html.

Apart from plagiarising other external sources of material, be aware that your work will be electronically cross-checked against other students’ work. We encourage you to discuss ideas with your fellow students but you must write original work for submission. Assignments can only be submitted to Turnitin once, so make sure your assignment is finalised before you submit.

Mid-semester test:

The mid-semester test will be closed book, will take 50 minutes and will be held on the morning of Wednesday 16 September 2020. The test will consist of short-answer questions and cover all lecture and practical content up to and including Week 6 (i.e. lectures 1-12 and practicals 1-4).

Prac Project (in the final weeks of the pracs):

The project is an innovation which we hope to run in some form depending upon the health rules in late October. The aim is that you select an experimental topic, report on the background to the topic, formulate a hypothesis, test it and report on your findings. Further details will be released in Week 7.

Discussions & seminar (BIOL6210 only):

This is an additional assessment task that you must complete in order to earn your BIOL6210 (postgraduate) status in this unit. It is not onerous and no marks are awarded but it is a hurdle - i.e. you MUST complete it to pass the unit. The format is to meet three weeks in a row late in the semester and discuss topics that each person might develop (first week). In the second meeting, we will go over each topic in more detail and check that it is feasible and in Week 3, you will present a three-minute Powerpoint seminar on the topic to the group. The common theme in all your talks will be a physiological process or analysis. For example, you might decide to explore how anteaters manage to derive nutrition from ants, and what processes occur in their guts and what organisms are involved. You must each choose a topic that is different from any of your fellow students. There are many possibilities. Some will like an ecosystem-level topic while other might chose something right down at the molecular level. Details to follow later in the semester.

Final examination:

The final exam will be closed book and three hours duration and held in the official university examination period at the end of the session. The exam will consist of short- and extended-answer questions. Some short-answer questions will be drawn from the sample short answer questions made available each week in lectures. Calculators without text retrieval capacity will be allowed into the exam room. For further information please see the university examination policy at: https://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/schedule_4.html

If you receive special consideration for the final exam, a supplementary exam will be scheduled in December 2020. By making a special consideration application for the final exam you are declaring yourself available for a resit during the supplementary examination period and will not be eligible for a second special consideration approval based on pre-existing commitments. Please ensure you are familiar with the policy prior to submitting an application. Approved applicants will receive an individual notification one week prior to the exam with the exact date and time of their supplementary examination.

If you are given a second opportunity to sit the final examination as a result of failing to meet the minimum mark required, you will be offered that chance during the same supplementary examination period and will be notified of the exact day and time after the publication of final results for the unit.