Students are expected to attend all lectures, tutorials a practicals. Recordings of lectures, tutorials and some practicals will be made available via iLearn. Attendance is mandatory for all practicals which are conducted in the soil mechanics lab. Please contact your convenor [steven.hansen@mq.edu.au] as soon as possible if you have difficulty attending and participating in any classes. If there are circumstances that mean you miss a practical, you can apply for a disruption to studies request through ask.mq.edu.au and if approved this practical will be removed from your record of absences.

The dates for submission of assessment tasks are listed on the ilearn schedule. Extensions for submission of assessment tasks will be given only for illness or misadventure, which must be supported by documentation through the online request portal (ask.mq.edu.au). Assessment tasks submitted late without approval will be penalized 10% of the potential total mark per day late. Students must keep a copy of their assignments. To pass this unit, students must achieve an average grade of at least 50%.

On-line quizzes

Each week, a given problem set will be used to make sure that you have read and understood the lecture material and have successfully completed the practical and tutorial. The problem set will be administered using online quizzes through the iLearn system and together are worth 10% of the unit mark. You will do these quizzes in your own time, open book, and they will be available on Friday. They should only be attempted after completing that week’s practical and tutorial. The quizzes will close at 23:59 the following Wednesday. There will be a time limit of between 30 mins and 90 mins depending on how much material is covered. Quizzes will include conceptual questions as well as calculations. The question order and numeric quantities are random; you will only get one chance to answer each question and you will not be able to go back to previous problems.

Practicals and lab reports

There is an assessed practical activity each week; the schedule and details of which will be distributed via iLearn. For each practical, you must submit a written lab report which addresses the given problems/questions. Some practicals involve group work but reports are individually assessed, i.e. you must submit your own work written in your own words. Cutting and pasting information from web pages is NOT acceptable. Information you 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 report (year, author, title, journal or link). Additionally, all work must be shown for calculation problems, including correct use of units and significant figures. Students who fail in these fundamental principles and basic skills may score zero for assignments.

Written assignments are to be submitted using Turnitin. Macquarie University promotes student awareness of information management and information ethics. As well as training and the provision of general information, the University tackles the issue of plagiarism through use of an online plagiarism detection tool (Turnitin). This software is used in conjunction with a set of procedures to ensure its use is equitable. Turnitin automatically compares your work to the work of your classmates, previous students from Macquarie University and other universities, and with material available on the Internet, both freely available and in subscription-based electronic journals and books. The results will be sent only to your unit convenor and tutors, who will analyze these in reference to the University's standard Policy on Plagiarism.

Exams

This unit has two exams, a final and a mid-term. These examinations Are based on lectures, reading material, practicals and tutorial exercises. This is information you should have absorbed through completing assignments and any other material presented during classes. A printed English dictionary (not electronic) may be brought in for the exam if English is not your first language. The educational rationale for the exam is to check the acquired knowledge by the students at the end of the unit.

The mid-term exam will be conducted during one of the scheduled lecture slots in week 7. Students are required to be present for this exam and exceptions will be given only if special consideration has been approved by the university prior to the exam. The final will occur during the normal exam period following week 13 and will be scheduled by the university. The exam timetable will be available in draft form about eight weeks before the commencement of examinations and finalized approximately four weeks before the commencement of the examinations.

Textbooks

The first weeks of class will use the free online textbook:

        Johnson, Affolter, Inkenbrandt, and Mosher (2017). An Introduction to Geology. Salt Lake Community College.

        Source: https://opengeology.org/textbook/

The Soil Mechanics section uses the text:

        Holtz, Kovacs, & Sheahan (2011). An Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering (2nd Edition). Pearson Higher Ed, USA. ISBN 9780135201381

        The ebook can be purchased for ~$65 from: https://www.pearson.com.au/9780135201381

        Hardcopies can be obtained from a variety of sources.

This unit is broken up into several modules:

• Introduction to geology (weeks 1-3)
• Soil classification and clays (weeks 4-6)
• Soil and water (week 7-8)
• Soil mechanics (weeks 9-13)

See the iLearn page for more details.

not applicable