Essays
You are required to write a concise and focused essay that addresses the question you are set making use of relevant knowledge and understanding you have acquired from lecture material and wider reading. Our expectation is that you will write the essay having spent considerable time studying the module content, engaging in wider reading, taking and organising notes, prior to the release of the OTLA question (i.e. as part of your revision). It is unlikely that the quality of the essay you produce will reach our expectations, and receive a decent mark, if you have not studied and engaged in wider reading before the OTLA questions are released. Wider reading could include information from textbooks or reviews that was not directly covered in the lectures and/or relevant primary sources (e.g. research publications, policy documents etc.). For each essay question you attempt, you should follow the guidelines outlined below.
• Your answer should be a concise piece of writing that integrates material from different sources (lectures and wider reading) to provide a coherent overview of the topic area. Your essay should not be a loose collection of observations or thoughts.
• The essay should have an introduction that provides the wider context to the topic and which leads up to the focus of the essay question. An abstract is not required. The introduction might for example include a definition for the discipline area/topic being covered and establish the scope of the material that will be covered.
• The main body of your answer should be illustrated with relevant examples. The best examples are likely to be seminal and/or current (e.g. key advances in the field, cited widely and/or published in major journals). You should consider using headings to emphasise the structure of your answer.
• Your answer should end with a final concluding paragraph that summarises your major observations and conclusions.
• Consider illustrating your answer with sketches, figures and tables if this is appropriate for addressing the question that has been asked. In Biological Science-related topics this is often the case, as data, evidence and ideas (e.g. models) are usually presented in a visual form. A good illustration can save a considerable number of words. Each illustration should have a title and a brief legend and be referred to in the main body and be embedded at appropriate points in the main body of your essay.
• Figures and tables can be adapted from a source such as a textbook, review or research paper, but this should be acknowledged, e.g. Adapted from Smith and Jones (2019).
• Given the time available to you, it is likely that figures will often need to be hand drawn. Please embed an electronic version of the diagram into your essay question (e.g. by taking a photograph using the camera on your mobile phone and inserting it at the appropriate point). A full page can be used, if required. It is important that figures are legible, but figures will be marked for their content and relevance to the question asked and not for how neat and polished they are.
• You should cite key references in the text at appropriate points and provide a reference list at the end of the essay. The referencing style. should be Leeds Harvard.
• Please make sure each essay is completed as a word-processed document using 1.5 line spacing, Arial font (11 pt minimum) and margins of 2 cm on each side. All pages should be numbered in the footer. Each essay should be no longer than 1,000 words. Note, this is the maximum word limit and shorter answers may still gain a high score so long as they meet the criteria (see below) associated with a strong Level 2 essay The standard penalties will apply for exceeding this limit (see below).
• Each essay should start with a title page that includes the following information: module number and module title, student number, section of paper (where appropriate) and question number (where appropriate), and title of question. The title of the question should be repeated at the start of your answer. Students who have a purple electronic coversheet provided by the Student Support team in relation to their specific learning difficulty, should make this their first page and then follow the above instructions for the second page.
• Subheadings and in-text citations are included in the word count, but not the title page, the essay question itself when used as an essay title, reference lists, figures, tables or legends. The word count (excluding reference lists, figures, tables or legends) should be included at the end of the document.
• As a guide, we suggest including 3 to 5 references for an essay. However, do bear in mind that it is not only about the number of references you include but the relevance and appropriateness of the references you select as well (e.g. have you identified, seminal works, does your references indicate up to date reading of the topic area).
Each essay will be marked using the Qualitative Criteria for Judgmental Assessment of Level 1 & 2 Online Time-limited Assessment (OTLA) Essays (Undergraduate). These criteria award marks under three categories, i) content, ii) interpretation and iii) presentation. Therefore, in reviewing your essay, you should be aware that excellent answers have the following qualities:
1. presents authoritative material relevant to the question from supplementary reading as well as lectures;
2. demonstrates clear understanding of the material presented, e.g. by explaining concepts at a level appropriate for the level of study;
3. shows analytic ability, e.g. by identifying competing arguments or positions and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of information;
4. makes judgements about concepts or ideas, e.g. by identifying the most important finding, approach, or argument;
5. has a structure that provides a logical flow of information, includes sub-titles as appropriate and uses a consistent and accurate referencing style.
