Submission of work: All assessment tasks (proposal, abstract & final review) must be submitted electronically via the relevant TURNITIN link located in iLearn.

Scheduling of assessment tasks: Assessment tasks have been scheduled so that feedback from earlier assessments can adequately inform the more heavily-weighted latter tasks (full grant proposal & review). Where possible they have been designed so as to not contribute to workload bottlenecks for students undertaking Year 1 of the MRes program.

Academic honesty - IMPORTANT: Presenting the work of another person as one’s own is a serious breach of the University’s rules and carries significant penalties. The University’s Academic Honesty Policy can be accessed at:

http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html 

In this unit we will be checking written work for plagiarism using TURNITIN. Penalties for plagiarism may include a zero mark for the assignment or in more extreme cases, failure of the unit. Plagiarism WILL be noted on your academic record. Full details of penalties can be found at:

http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/schedule_penalties.html

Extensions, penalties and disruptions to study: Overdue assessment tasks will attract a penalty at the rate of 5 % of the total mark allocated for the task per day past the due date. Weekend days are included in this calculation. The penalty will be capped at 75 %, which means that once your submission is more than 15 days overdue you can earn up to a maximum of 25 % of the assessment grade. The date and time of your submission will be taken as registered by TURNITIN.

Deadlines for assessments are not negotiable except under circumstances when you have experienced a serious and unavoidable disruption. In such instances, you should formally lodge a disruption to studies notification via ASK@MQ. University policy and procedure in regard to disruptions is given in the links below, but please note in particular:

1. To be eligible for special consideration, you must notify the University of a serious and unavoidable disruption within five (5) working days of the commencement of the disruption;
2. Such requests must be lodged for the specific assessment task for which you experienced disruption. Special consideration cannot be granted retrospectively (i.e., beyond the 5-day window of each assessment due-date);
3. Unit staff will NOT be held responsible for assessing special consideration unless a disruption notification is formally lodged viaASK@MQ.

Further information about the Disruptions to Studies policy and procedure is online at Policy Central:

http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/disruption_studies/procedure.html.

And there is additional information on managing your Disruptions to Studies at:

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

Unit readings

There is no formally prescribed text for this unit. Recommended readings will be populated into iLearn. These include the following guides for effective science communication:

Cheng K (2019) Expository Scientific Writing: A Short Guide.

Haddaway et al. 2020 Eight problems with literature reviews and how to fix them. Nature Ecology & Evolution

iLearn

iLearn and email will be the principle method of communication in this subject. We expect you to regularly stay in touch with the unit’s dedicated iLearn site, where you will find ongoing unit announcements and a group discussion forum. The site will also be populated with material such as relevant new literature and grade outcomes for specific assessment tasks.

As noted earlier, additional resources of relevance are provided on the MRes community iLearn site “Biological Sciences PG”, accessible from your iLearn homepage under “Community Units” or directly via the link:

https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/course/view.php?id=49045

How do you log in? The URL for the iLearn is: https://ilearn.mq.edu.au/. You will need to log in to iLearn each time you use it. Your user name is your student number and the password your oneID. For further details go to http://mq.edu.au/iLearn/student_info/index.htm. If you are having trouble accessing your online unit due to a disability or health condition, please contact Macquarie Student Services. If you cannot log in after ensuring you have entered your username and password correctly, contact Student IT Help: 9850 4357 (in Sydney) or 1 800 063 191 (outside Sydney).

The structure for this unit is based around two writing modules corresponding to each half of the teaching session. The first module deals with writing an opinion/commentary-style literature review and the second deals with writing a research grant proposal. Each module starts with several weeks of scheduled face-to-face tutorial hours in which you will receive guidance for the task. There is a common assessment structure for each module consisting of a plan/proposal, a student peer-assessment task, and the full document.

A full outline of unit activities and their precise dates/times throughout the teaching session will be updated in Unit Guide publication prior to the session start (and published on the unit's iLearn site). 

This unit has for several years been based around a single literature review task, and prior to that served as the “theme topic” literature review component of the Biological Sciences Honours program. The 2021 delivery of BIOL7920 has been modified to include a roughly equally-weighted grant-writing task, therefore scaling back the size and scope of the review writing task. This change has occurred along with changes to related units in a course restructure aimed at coherence and continuity of the Year 1 MRes curriculum. The overall emphasis in BIOL7920 remains on developing effective scientific writing practices.