Marking Schedule for Reflection

About the Reflection

Task

Identify an aspect of your group project that you want to follow up on, an aspect where you want to deepen your understanding, an aspect that you want to research independently, yourself. This aspect should relate to the context of your project – ethical, legal, socioeconomic, social, cultural, or linguistics.

The aim of this task is to give you the skills to independently research relevant interdisciplinary work.

You are expected to write around 1000 words. The word count does not include figures, tables, captions for figures and tables, or references. It doesn’t matter if you write 10% more or less than that, but if you write much more, or much less, you will be penalised.

Tips

Make sure that you review the definitions of plagiarism and patch writing.

If you need an extension of the deadline, let the ITO know in advance.

Marking

The mark consists of several parts.  You can get up to 10, 20, or 30 points per part, and the sum of all parts yields the final mark. As always in the UK, marks between 70 and 79 are very good, 80+ is brilliant, 60-69 is good, 50-59 is a pass, and below 49 is not a pass at Master’s level.

As a rule, if a component has a maximum 30 points, 15 is pass, 20 is good, and 24 is great. For 20 points maximum, the corresponding numbers are 10, 13, and 15, and for 10 points, it’s 5, 6, and 8. (The pattern is roughly half, two thirds, three quarters.)

This marking schedule will also be attached to your essay in TurnItIn Feedback Studio, and I will give you specific feedback for each point.

  1. What is it that you are discussing?
    You need to have a clear, well-defined topic.
    Maximum points: 20
  2. How does it link with the project of your group?
    Your topic needs to be linked meaningfully with your group project. Explain briefly what your group project is about, and make sure that you justify the link clearly.
    Maximum points: 10
  3. How good is your discussion?
    Is it coherent, does it make a strong argument, does it raise interesting questions, does it use appropriate concepts from the scientific literature?
    Maximum points: 30
  4. How good is your writing?
    Is it clear and understandable? Do you use references properly? For each instance of patch writing and other forms of plagiarism that I see, I will deduct 5 points up to a maximum of 10 from the writing mark.
    Maximum points: 10
  5. What are the implications of your findings for the work of your group? Maximum points: 20

One of the most difficult parts of the reflection will be to find appropriate scientific literature. Use Google Scholar, Web of Science, or PubMed. Remember only to use Wikipedia as a starting point of your investigations, and not as the be all and end all.

Suggested Structure

For those of you who find it difficult to write essays, here’s a suggested structure that will help you.

Introduction

Briefly describe your project. Describe the aspect of your project that you want to write about, and show how it is linked to the app or artefact you are producing and the context in which it will be used. Be very precise, define all technical terms and all the concepts that you use.

Literature Review

What relevant research has been done about this concept? How is it defined in the scientific literature? What has been found? Has it been studied with users / students / other people, and if yes, what were the outcomes? Did you find something similar with your own users?

Discussion

What are the implications of the findings you have outlined in the previous section for your project? How can they inform or shape your artefact, app, or user testing?