Students are expected to regularly attend/participate in the twice-weekly online lectures/discussions, and are expected to attend the weekly prac/tutorial classes.

Assessment for this unit consists of a mixture of quizzes, short prac/tutorial reports, a written assignment, a final exam, and participation marks. 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. It will be essential to keep up with the lectures and associated quizzes, and the pracs/tutorials and their associated short reports, as marks accrue throughout the semester.

All assessments will be graded and we will make marks available within three weeks of the assessment due date (but sooner, generally). Marks will be available on Gradebook in iLearn. Feedback on the written assignment will be provided through Turnitin when the marks are released.

Quizzes on lecture and prac material (10%)

There will be five multiple choice quizzes through the semester, each worth 2%. The quizzes are designed to incentivise staying up to date with lecture material and with prac reports. Quizzes will be held in weeks 2, 4, 7, 10, 12. Each quiz will open on iLearn on the Wednesday (after the lecture) and close on the Sunday of that week, at midnight. Once you start the quiz you will have 60 minutes to complete it and you are allowed two attempts. The quizzes will be automatically marked, and the marks and correct answers will be released once submissions have been completed.

The questions are designed to ensure that you have familiarity with the lecture material and with key concepts from the prac classes. They do not require a deep understanding of the lecture material (deeper understanding will be assessed in the Final Exam, and in the written report – a project proposal).

Short reports on practical classes and tutorials (25%)

We will run weekly pracs/tutorials throughout the semester. In-person attendance at these classes is expected, unless the University shifts back to remote-learning mode. A short report from five of the classes will require submission through iLearn, generally (but not always) one week after the class (in weeks 5, 6, 7, 11, 13).  These reports are designed to test your knowledge of topics covered in these classes, which will generally coincide with topics covered in lectures. More information on these assessments will be provided as the semester progresses.

Plant Function Report (20%)

Students will submit (through Turnitin) a substantial written report in the form of a Project Proposal, aimed at integrating a range of concepts taught throughout the course concerning plant function. More information on this assessment will be provided as the semester progresses.

Final examination (35%)

The final exam will be three hours duration and held in the official university examination period at the end of the session. The exam will consist of short- , medium- and extended-answer questions.

Participation in pracs, tutes and remote-mode classes (10%)

Active participation in face-to-face pracs/tutes, online discussions of lecture material, and online pracs/tutorials (if we revert to remote-learning mode), will be recognised accordingly. Please note, for face-to-face classes, simply turning up will not count as “active participation”; and for remote-mode classes, simply logging in to the session and listening will not count as “active participation”!

Checklist for written assessments

For all written assessments: please use the following list to check your assignments before electronic submission.

• Text is the required length
• Text has been proof-read and spell-checked
• References are reputable sources (not Wikipedia!), and are cited at appropriate points within the text
• Formatting of references follows the style of a standard ecological journal, e.g. Austral Ecology or Functional Ecology.
• Assignment is your own work – no passages have been copied verbatim from reference sources or from other students. (see note on plagiarism, below, and the relevant University Policy)

Penalties

5% of the marks for the written assignments will be deducted for each day they are late, and assignments will not be accepted for marking if more than 10 days overdue. Exceptions can be granted by the unit Convenors if there are sufficiently serious medical or other extenuating circumstances (appropriate supporting documentation should be provided, through the University's online system).  For example, if the initial score for an assessment is 67% but it has been submitted one day late, the final score will be 62% (or 57% if two days late, etc).

As outlined in assessment rubrics, penalties will be applied for reports being noticeably over the word limit, and increasingly so the more over the limit they are.

Plagiarism

Students are required to written reports via the plagiarism detection software Turnitin. This can be accessed on the unit’s iLearn website. Your assessment task will be automatically compared to work of your classmates, previous students from Macquarie and other universities, and with material available on the Internet. The results of the analysis will be sent to the unit Convenor. Any evidence of plagiarism will be dealt with following University policy. The penalties imposed by the University for plagiarism are serious and may include loss of marks, referral to a Faculty Disciplinary Committee, or even expulsion from the University.

Moderation of assessments

This unit and its assessments are moderated according to departmental and university requirements. For example, where assessments are marked by multiple people, all agree on the marking process and marks are compared to ensure consistency.

Requirements for Practical classes

The work carried out during practical classes is an important and integral part of the course. You must read, download and either print the prac notes to bring to each class, or bring them on a laptop or tablet.

Laboratory requirements

• Enclosed shoes (you cannot be present in the lab or field without these)
• Notebook and pencils/pens for notes & diagrams
• Laptop, if you have one, with Excel and Word (or open source equivalents)
• USB data stick to transfer data (recently checked with anti-virus software)
• Remember, no food or drink is allowed in University laboratories
• Please switch mobile phones off

Recommended Reading

There is no set textbook for this subject. Recommended books (all available from the library) that, between them, cover many of the lecture topics include:

• Attiwill PM & Wilson B (Eds) (2006). Ecology : An Australian Perspective. Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Vic.
• Atwell BJ et al (1999). Plants In Action: Adaptation In Nature, Performance In Cultivation. MacMillan Education Australia, Melbourne.
• Chapin FS et al (2002). Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem Ecology. Springer, New York.
• Garnier E et al (2016) Plant Functional Diversity: Organism traits, community structure, and ecosystem properties. Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Gurevitch J et al (2006). The Ecology of Plants. Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, Sunderland, MA. 2nd Edition.
• Lambers H et al (1998). Plant Physiological Ecology. Springer-Verlag, New York.
• Pugnaire FI & Valladares F (Eds) (2007). Functional plant ecology. CRC Press, Boca Raton. 2nd Edition.
• Raven PH et al (2013). Biology of plants. WH Freeman, New York. 8th Edition. (or 7th edition – published 2005).
• Willis KJ & McElwain JC (2014). The Evolution of Plants. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2nd Edition.

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Many lectures will include a list of key readings (journal articles, book chapters etc). Where possible we will make these available, whether through the Library Reserve or through the unit iLearn page.

Technology Used and required

All course content will be made available via the iLearn unit webpage. You are expected to use iLearn for:

• Regularly checking subject announcements
• Downloading lecture and reference materials
• Accessing the quizzes
• Submitting assignments

Students will be required to use appropriate software, particularly Excel and Minitab or R, for data analysis and graphing. These programs are free to download from University servers or can be run online via AppStream (https://wiki.mq.edu.au/display/appstream/About).

Lectures are timetabled for Mondays (11am-12pm) and Wednesdays (2-3pm). Because all lectures will be online and we want to maximise opportunities for student-staff engagement, many lecture slots will be used for discussions of lecture material, with students required to listen to the lecture in their own time, in advance of the scheduled time, and to come along to the discussion with questions in hand, and willingness to participate in discussions.  A full lecture schedule will be provided at the beginning of semester.

Practical/Tutorial classes will be held weekly, either in the Glasshouse Labs (5WW-428, also known as F5A-428 -- at the top of the F5A car park), or remotely, via Zoom. Students should enrol in either the Monday class (1-3pm) or the Wednesday class (3-5pm). Further details of prac/tutorial topics will be given at the start of semester.

For 2020 we have (reluctantly) dropped the fieldwork component of BIOL3410 and will not run an On-Campus Session. The major written report is different this year. Rather than being related to fieldwork undertaken during on OCS it will now take the form of a project proposal.  Lectures will all be online for this year. The core lecture material will be essentially the same as in 2019, but each year we have a different set of guest lectures given by outstanding researchers working in the Sydney region. The prac/tute classes will be a mixture of classes run in previous years and new classes. This year the final exam will have a stronger emphasis on extended answer questions designed to test student understanding of core concepts, and to synthesise ideas across different parts of the course. For 2020 we have reintroduced participation marks, to more strongly incentivise student engagement.