Course Requirements and Grading

Course Requirements

As the above shows, there are no exams in the course. The final project is not a written paper in term-paper or essay form, but rather a Powerpoint, which must be presented orally in class and submitted electronically by the end of classes in Spring 2008.

Grading

Grading of the written work will be based primarily on quality of the content of the work (quality of your ideas, your generalizations based on evidence gathered, your understanding of how others' ideas fit together, and the organizational coherence of the project as a whole). I also take account of the professionalism of the Powerpoint. Anything that detracts from professionalism--typos, misspellings, claims without proper referencing, etc., will affect the grade as well.

Content and form are not always precisely distinguishable when assessing quality of a project. With a Powerpiont, the structure gives you an easy way to organize your thoughts, but it is still possible to present a project in Powerpoint form that does not show a coherent progression of ideas, that therefore cannot be used easily by others to gain new knowledge.

In general, in assessment of a project the following considerations are of great importance: How easy is it for others seeing the Powerpoint to absorb an understanding of the project? Have you made a convincing case for whatever claims or generalizations you are trying to establish in your project? Providing and referencing evidence to support your points is crucial. If you are assessing other researchers' work, are your assessments based on evidence from other work that you can bring to bear on what the researchers are claiming?

I expect students' Powerpoints to be of sufficient quality that they can be posted/archived on the course website as additional resources for students and scholars searching for information on the particular topics of the course.

Overall Course Grade

1. quality of written work as described above (with the Powerpoint project counting as written work even though it is not in standard essay form).

2. quality of the class presentation of final project (usually this matches 1 but not always--sometimes people have difficulty standing up and presenting even a well-structured Powerpoint presentation. If you have this kind of difficulty, practice will be necessary. Practice is useful, in fact, for those of any level of skill at oral presentation. Everyone can improve their presentational skills, and you can use this class to do it.

3. quality of other contributions to the course such as contributing to class discussions (largely dependent on reading the readings in time for the class discussion, and making an effort to say something about them) and to the course website.

Final Project: Written Paper Option

If you prefer to hand in a final term paper based on your research project, instead of submitting your presentation in Powerpoint form, you may do so. Write-up of a research project in paper style is the next step toward the publication of research, which is important for research progress. Those heading to graduate school in Linguistics, Cognitive Sciences, Psychology, Anthropology etc. might want to put their project in a form that might be useful as a research/writing sample for graduate applications or as a basis for future research on your topic. These students can choose to write up their Powerpoint as a final paper of between 10 and 15 double-spaced pages. It is a bit more work, but having practice in writing up Powerpoints is extremely useful for those who plan to go into research which requires publication.

Last modified 21 Feb 2008
© 2004-2008 Suzanne Kemmer