1) Follow the rubrics for the assignments carefully so as to gain maximum marks and submit your work on Turnitin – under each assignment below is a submission button.

2) Late Assessment Submission Penalty:  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 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.59pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue.  (The times are Sydney times.)

3) IMPORTANT NOTE ON FINAL MARKS: Grading decisions for each assessment task will be moderated against the set criteria and standards before task results are released.

4) Do not plagiarise: plagiarism will not be tolerated: see 'MQ Academic Integrity Policy' below.

5) AI: An increasing number of students is turning to the various AI programmes when writing assignments, a practice much discussed at department and faculty levels. It is impossible to detect the use of AI accurately hence banning its use is to little avail. But I do urge you to be terribly careful if you resort to using such programmes as they are a double-edged sword: they do make errors and these are obvious during the marking process, and so will count against you mostly because they tend to summarise generally without building a useful or indeed convincing argument; it certainly cannot replace critical human thinking. The assignment questions rely heavily on your opinions and interpretations based on close readings of Herodotus and Thucydides and secondary readings. It is always better, I think, to know your material and engage with it one-to-one for the maximum learning experience!

¹ If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

• the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment
• Academic Success for academic skills support.

² Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation.

³ An automatic short extension is available for some assessments. Apply through the Service Connect Portal.

Schedule: There are no face-to-face lectures; all weekly lectures are recorded and made available on the ilearn site from week 1 - lectures can be found in the 'Lectures' folder which will take you to Echo360 where the audio-recorded lectures are stored for this unit.  There is also also be a weekly online discussion forum, which will also be the basis for the written assignments; note that weeks 2-9 are mandatory to complete for the Critical Evaluation assessment.

Method: AHIS/AHIX8210 is delivered in blended mode as a Macquarie University unit of study.

Webpage: Online units can be accessed at: http://ilearn.mq.edu.au/

Technology used and skills required: PC and Internet access are required; microsoft word. Basic computer skills (e.g., internet browsing) and skills in word processing are also a requirement.

Please contact IT staff for any further, more specific, requirements, to do with technology.

Required and recommended resources

No required purchase books.

All modern readings are available through the unit's Leganto page; please view these readings regularly as you are required and certainly expected to engage with the weekly readings (ancient and modern) each week and for your assessments. Suggested companion volumes for Herotodus and for Thucydides are listed at the bottom of the Leganto list - students may wish to look at these volumes for research and additional reading in preparation for their essays.

Please view the 'Seminar programme' pdf available on the iLearn website for weekly readings and forum discussion questions to which students must respond.