TU-EV0004 - Institutions and How to Change Them, 07.06.2021-31.08.2021

Topic outline

• General essay instructions
  Each round, you write an individual essay on the articles. The following guiding questions are in a sequence of increasing difficulty, from summarizing to analysis, synthesis, and argumentation. An ideal essay would progress through the sequence, or something similar, and spend most time on the more advanced levels of synthesis and argumentation. The purpose of the guiding questions is to help you get started with writing the essay. You can structure your essay differently if you prefer. If writing essays is very difficult for you for a good reason, such as dyslexia, you can discuss with the course instructor if you can give an individual presentation to the course instructor instead of writing an essay.

   

  Guiding questions for individual essays:

  - summarize each article in a short paragraph

  - give a short example that illustrates the issue / idea / situation / problem highlighted by / implication etc of the article

  - compare the unit articles and relate them to each other (or compare one unit article to an article of a previous unit or other unit material). What do they have in common and what differentiates them? Do they agree with each other? Are they interested in the same things?

  - free reflection on whatever you find interesting, such as what you learned or how you would like to apply the ideas of the article

  - what emerges when you combine the articles and materials of the unit? (= synthesis)

  - what is your take on the topic(s)? Make motivated, evidenced, and structured arguments.

   

  The grading of the essays follows the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) criteria. The intended length of the essay is 1 to 2 pages in the June 3-credit module. With Calibri font, 12 pt, and 1.5 spaces between lines, 2 pages corresponds to about 800 words. The essays can be a bit shorter in the August 2-credit module: 1 to 1,5 pages.

   

  Solo level	Description	Illustrative example of responses to the question “What is a cow?” *	Corresponding grade
  1	Pre-structural. No understanding, uses irrelevant information or misses the point altogether.	“Ääh”	0, 1
  2	Uni-structural level. Can identify, do a procedure, or recite.	“A cow is when you are milking.”	2
  3	Multi-structural level. Can classify, combine, and enumerate.	“Cows give us milk and when slaughtered they give us oil, meat, fat, bone and leather.”	3
  4	Relational level. Can relate, compare, and analyse.	“The essential difference between a Jersey cow and a Hereford Angus cow is that a Jersey cow produces a lot more milk but is substantially smaller.”	4
  5	Extended abstract level. Can generalize, hypothesise, and theorise.	“Cattle, or cows, are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae. It seems to me that humans must have been the root cause for the diversification of cattle because they were selected for different genetic characteristics, like draft, milk, meat, size, colour, and behaviour, to name a few.”	5

  ´* The example is taken from the video Teaching teaching and understanding understanding by Claus Brabrand and is based on the "Constructive Alignment" theory developed by Prof. John Biggs.