An important part of any course, but particularly an online course is the things you actually do to demonstrate your understanding (or to express your lack of understanding – something you should never be afraid of). Each session of this course has a number of activities (usually two or three per session). Then, at the end of the course there is an assignment to help you summarise and actually make use of the understanding you have gleaned from the course.
This section describes the type of activities you will be asked to do, and outlines the choices you could make for your assignment.
topThere are two different kinds of activity that you will be asked to complete whilst on this course. They are:
In the first case your posting will be visible to everyone in the class and everyone in the class will be able to respond to it. In the second case your posting will only be visible to members of your group and only group members will be allowed to respond to it.
The reason for having class and group discussion boards is because some topics lend themselves to wider discussion than others. It will also help your tutor to see how each of you is working individually.
When posting you should always aim to keep your posting short and to the point because such postings are more likely to attract replies. Sometimes of course you need to make longer postings to explain a complex thought and that is fine. But remember that proper paragraphing will help people read a longer posting because it will break up the text and make it easier to read.
You will be asked to make postings that express:
When expressing your initial intuitions remember that this is exactly what you are being asked to do. Don’t spend more than a couple of minutes thinking about your answer, just ask yourself what you think and express it. This can often help you to see an issue more clearly. It will also help you to identify changes in your own thinking. No-one should be shy about expressing these initial intuitions because everyone’s answers will be as uninformed as everyone else’s – that, in fact, is the whole idea!
When sharing your thoughts about an argument you should aim to express these in the language of philosophy that you will be taught later in this session (for example, talk about premises and conclusions). This will help you to become familiar with such language, and it will also help you to be more precise.
On two occasions during the course, your tutor will put you into a group within your group so that you can have an inter-group argument about an issue. On both these occasions you will be assigned a side for which to argue. The side to which you are assigned may not be the side to which you naturally gravitate. This is done on purpose to force you to argue for a given side even where that might not be the side you would choose. People on similar courses have said that they find these exercises particularly useful. I hope you do too.
topYou will find that in session six instead of being given more reading and more activities to discuss and think about you will have a ‘reading week’. This week is designed to help you catch up on your reading, to get ahead, and generally just to reflect on what you have done so far. Several activities will be suggested for reading week, but it is entirely up to you to choose how you will use your time.
topThere are two methods of assessment for this course. They are:
Some of you may be doing the course just for fun. You might think that writing the assignment is not important. But if you do not write the assignment you will be missing out on an integral part of the course. You will find that you learn more in writing your assignment than you do in any other part of the course, because the assignment is, in effect, you thinking, and what is more thinking out loud in a way that has consequences (so your thinking is far more rigorous than it might otherwise be).
Please believe me when I say that you will be glad that you have done the assignment whether or not you are interested in credit for the course. As I suggested in the introduction you can maximise your chances of completing the assignment by starting to think about it right at the beginning of the course, and by ensuring that you write most of it during the course.
If you choose to write an essay this should be 1,000 words in length, provided with a bibliography, and you should choose from the following titles:
If you would prefer to write an essay on a title of your own choosing, please check first with your tutor.
You will note that most of these essay titles are questions. This is because philosophy essays are argumentative essays. The idea is that instead of just offering a précis of the reading you have done, you are intended to argue a case. I find it useful to remind students that you can describe an argument as if you were an observer reporting on the argument of others, or you can participate in an argument. In the latter case you have made the argument your own because you care about the truth and/or you have committed yourself to one side. As a philosopher, your aim is to participate rather than describe the argument.
For this option you would write a commentary on your contributions to the various discussions. The commentary should be 1,000 words and it should include such things as your present thoughts about what you wrote, your feelings about the views you were then expressing, and a summary of your thoughts about the course.
You should submit an essay plan or coursework assessment plan to your tutor by e-mail during the course. This will allow the tutor to give you guidance and make you more confident that you are on the right track. The plan should be a maximum of 200 words and can be a bullet point list of items or ideas that you want to cover in your assessment.
Your assignment should be uploaded to the course website by two weeks after the end of the course (see the course calendar for the assignment submission deadline). Your tutor will mark the assignment, writing comments on the body of your essay and completing a cover sheet pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of your essay, offering suggestions for improvement and awarding credit if appropriate.
Your tutor will then send your essay plus covering sheet to the Department for Continuing Education. Some essays will then be sent to the director of studies for moderation (this enables us to maintain control over the quality of our marking systems – it prevents any one tutor from marking too harshly or too leniently). Your essay and its covering sheet will then be returned to you. The whole process should take approximately 4 weeks from the submission of your essay.
This course is accredited with 10 CATS points (units of transferable credit at Undergraduate Level 1 within the University's Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS)). CATS points are widely recognised in universities and colleges throughout the UK. The coursework is therefore targeted at the level expected of students during the first term of the first year of an undergraduate degree. Completion of the first year of an undergraduate degree can be considered equivalent to gaining 120 CATS points. Please contact the Registry for further information about transferring points between institutions.