Unit Guide

General Information

Unit convenor and teaching staff	Unit convenor and teaching staff Oliver Griffith oliver.griffith@mq.edu.au
Credit points	Credit points 10
Prerequisites	Prerequisites Admission to MRes
Corequisites	Corequisites
Co-badged status	Co-badged status
Unit description	Unit description This foundation unit provides opportunities to search, read and critically review scientific literature in your sub-discipline at an advanced level. The topics are to be decided by the student in consultation with an approved mentor. All students undertake independent literature research, with regular mentoring from their topic mentor. Students will need to take responsibility for organising their workload throughout the session. This unit encourages students to directly interact with research active academic staff, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students and to explore the most current and controversial issues in the natural sciences. An oral seminar and written report are required on completion of this research.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

ULO1: Evaluate and synthesise the current state of knowledge in an area of active research
ULO2: Identify a knowledge gap in the field, explain its importance and present a case for addressing it
ULO3: Demonstrate mastery of bibliographic database software
ULO4: Critically review the written work of others to a professional standard
ULO5: Work with a mentor to identify a relevant research topic, plan and conduct literature based research, and reflect on the implementation of the research plan
ULO6: Present ideas from your synthesis clearly with supporting evidence

General Assessment Information

Late Assessment Submission Penalty

From 1 July 2022, Students enrolled in Session based units with written assessments will have the following university standard late penalty applied. Please see https://students.mq.edu.au/study/assessment-exams/assessments for more information.

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7^th day (including weekends). After the 7^th day, a grade of '0' will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11:55 pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical concern.

For any late submission of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, students need to submit an application for Special Consideration.

Assessments where Late Submissions will be accepted

In this unit, late submissions will be accepted for each submitted assignment with the above penalties.

Assessment Tasks

Name	Weighting	Hurdle	Due
Literature review - annotated bibliography	5%	No	Week 2, or as agreed
Literature review - outline	10%	No	Week 4
Peer review of professional work	10%	No	Week 6, or as agreed
Literature review - presentation	20%	No	Week 8
Literature review - peer review	10%	No	Week 11, or as agreed
Literature review	40%	No	Week 10 or 12, as agreed
Time on task diary	5%	No	Week 13

Literature review - annotated bibliography

Assessment Type ¹: Annotated bibliography
Indicative Time on Task ²: 14 hours
Due: Week 2, or as agreed
Weighting: 5%

You will create an annotated bibliography using a referencing database program such as Mendeley or Endnote. For each reference you should include a short description of the relevance of the paper to your literature review. This allows for formative feedback from your supervisor and unit convenor on your planned literature review.