UniCERT IV A

Outline

Quick task list

• For next week: Library Experience• For the next 7-8 weeks: choose a text from

the materials in the copyshop folder ("Dr Evans UniCERT 4") and present it

• From beginning of December on: AP• (1) LSP• (2) Draft• (3) Submission of paper (on the last day of

semester)

Communication during the semester

• My office hours are:• TUE 17-19 in G40C-253 and by

appointment• Email: rob.evans@ovgu.de• Website: http://www.ovgu.de/evans

• Everything concerning this course is to be found on my site

Aim of the course

• Do the groundwork necessary for an academic paper to be written

• Acquaint participants with notions of academic ("wissenschaftlich") work

• Discussion, argument and dialogue• Presentation technique(s)• Literature search and research question

formulation

Library Experience and Report-back

• In the first and second weeks of the semester you will go into the Uni-Library to the Zeitschriften for WiWi in particular and elsewhere where necessary

• You will first acquaint yourself with the range of English-language (and all other) journals in MD

• You will then choose 1 article from the last 2 years in a journal of your choice (and interest) or, if this has been permitted, from the monographic and edited works in the library.

• NO electronic texts are allowed in this task.• NO MAGAZINES!

LER contd

• In class you will probably be asked to report very briefly about your library experience and your article

• Your report-back will include information about the main topic of the chosen article/book/edited book, the main arguments (named, not explained) and the broad conclusion in the briefest possible form. This is a summarizing and informing task and reflects back on your willingness and ability to be focused and mindful of your peers.

• You will hand in electronically 1 page A4 reporting on the library exploration experience, with the brief summary of the article (50-70 words only!) and full bibliographical details

Full bibliographic details

• Author(s) (Year) Title. In: Journal Name, Vol. Nr., pp. Xx-yy.

• You will be expected – as a matter of course – to have acquainted yourself right from the beginning with the place of publication, the details of the journal, information about methods or conditions of publication, about the author(s), their methods, their results, their other work, the work of others they have employed, etc.

Plan of the course

• Introduction

• Presentations (Weeks 4-10 )• Then roughly:• Week 9: research protocols (LSPs)• Week 10 -13: draft introduction• Weeks 10-14/15 : tutorials• End Week 14/15: submission of paper

In-course presentations• Topics: this semester the over-arching themes are • Globalisation and Sustainability• Globalisation and Development• Globalisation Culture and Society• (Gender and Globalisation will not take place this

semester, but questions of Gender will be central to all three groups)

• Each participant will take one of the texts in the copy shop, online, or sent to them

• A presentation of 20-25 mins plus discussion will be given

• Vital: a handout (A4), sources (set text plus other sources) discussed, discussion points

Texts and topics: for example "globalisation theories"

• CARSON• BAUER• SEN• FRANK• CASTELLS• MOGHADAM• etc

• Texts which are now somewhat 'out-of-date' will need to be put in their time-context in the light of more recent developments

• It is expected, too, that each participant does their best to make connections between their own text and what they have heard from others.

Texts and topics: approaches• Read the text you will present carefully• Make notes on what is familiar, what is unfamiliar, what

you do not understand, what you find strange or unexpected.

• Consider carefully what the main assumptions in the text are: what assumptions does the author make about the reader (beliefs, culture, knowledge), about the world?

• Try to work out how you can communicate your own reaction to the text to your audience without showing disrespect to the text or to the author.

• The aim of the academic presentation is to examine an idea from different points of view

Before the presentation

• Inform yourself about your text – the others won‘t know anything about it, you are the expert

• Consider links to other things you know in your field, consider differences, too

• Try to use the text to challenge what you (think you) know

• Remain outside of the text, looking in, at the author, the text and any other sources of information or argument you have

Part 2

The academic paper

Some preliminary points regarding the academic paper

• It is very possible to fail.• Failure may be due to:• Language• Academic level• Use of sources (e.g. plagiarism)• Length• Form

Non-submission

• It is sadly not unknown for students to sit through the whole course and then fade away when the writing phase begins

• It is also not unknown for students to complete ALL the individual tasks except the paper itself

• The consequence in both cases is a fail• Should a student 'fade away' before completing

all the individual tasks, s/he will be required to repeat this part of the course.

• What is valid for my course is valid, too, for Dr Kiernan's, Mr Harper‘s and Ms Abraham's course. Both modules must be attended and completed.

Marking the paper

• 1 to 1.3: exceptional• 1.7-2.3: good• 2.7 to 3.3: satisfactory• 3.7 to 4: sufficient (normally only given if no

progress can be expected)• 5: inadequate – which means: re-working and

moving on to pass a second time round (this can be considered a real second chance)

• Remember, good means just that, good.

The academic paper

• The topic is, in principle, open.• The title and focus is to be agreed with

me.• There are a number of tasks that must be

fulfilled on the way to writing the academic paper:

• Library exploration and report task, Literature search protocol, Draft introduction, Submission

Literature search (LSP)

• The literature search excludes expressly all internet files which are not electronic journals

• Electronic journals are exclusively understood to be electronic scholarly journals, to be found in the catalogues of university libraries, including, obviously the Uni-Bibliothek Magdeburg.

Literature search protocol: form

• The LSP must refer to at least:• 2 books ('monographic' or edited)• 3-5 scholarly articles – at least 2 of which

should be from the Universitätsbibliothek Magdeburg and the others from any collection of electronic journals you may care to access (they can of course ALL be from the UB)

• At least one page A4, probably 2.

Bibliography

• Full bibliographical references for sources collected in preliminary literature search

• This will probably take account of corrections to your LSP

• Producing a correct bibliography is an essential step on the way to producing an AP

Rough draft introduction

• A first draft of your introduction should be submitted for discussion in a tutorial

• This should help you to get your bearings regarding style and content of the paper as a whole

• It should be around 500 words in length.

Sources

• Sources for the academic paper should be predominantly books and scholarly articles

• The language of the sources should be overwhelmingly English, unless the topic requires specialist literature (e.g. cheese-making in rural Mongolia)

• Web-sites are of course welcome as secondary sources, but citeable literature is to be preferred.

Internet and other sources and plagiarism

• Wikipaedia is NOT acceptable as a source • Commercial magazines ('International Baker', or

'Car-Dealer's Monthly' or IBM Newsletter or RWE Nachrichten or whatever) are NOT academic sources

• Sources do NOT become academic by demonstrating that the author has a PhD or is a Professor (somewhere) just as the quality of wine is not guaranteed by the simple fact that it is made from grapes or cheese from milk

• Newspapers are … newspapers, not scientific sources

Plagiarism(†Baron zu Guttenberg in memoriam)

• EVERY source you use – and the point of the academic paper is to use sources – MUST BE INDICATED, otherwise you will be guilty of plagiarism

• In a number of universities, plagiarism is a punishable offence (e.g. Bayreuth, ask Mr zu Guttenberg)

• It is normally extremely easy to detect plagiarised text

• It simply is not worth the risk, apart from being sad

Nota bene

• The academic paper should be neither– Descriptive (how it is done)

• Nor – Prescriptive (how to do it)

• Rather, it should be– Analytical (what are the different views expressed

about the topic?)

• and– Carefully weighing up (on balance, it seems that)

Submission

• Submission of the AP is fixed for the last day of the semester

• Complete package: 1 academic paper, any printed article or net sources as appendix, 1 conference handout, 1 signed eidestattliche Erklärung (link on website) any downloaded or other sources (e.g. pdfs) on a CD or uploaded

• A PDF must be also sent to me by mail