Comment on Transcribed text of Samantha Fulnecky's assignment, paper, and professor's comments
Doorbook@lemmy.world 1 day agoI think defining discussion here is the critical point. If someone take the assignment literally, they don’t need to provide arguments to describe how they feel about the topic in the article.
Since this part can be interpreted differently, the students should get some points. Or ask the resubmit their papers with “scientifically supported evidence”
9bananas@feddit.org 1 day ago
the problem here is that this is in a university setting.
the student has almost certainly been made aware of what “discussion” means.
i explained in a different comment (check my profile if the link doesn’t work, not sure how to properly link comments…) why this is not a sufficient excuse.
because the previous comment seemed well received, I’ll try to give another example of how this sort of course might generally play out:
at a typical university you’ll get some general orientation at the beginning of the first semester. this will include things like the rules for exams, the rules for the campus, the rules for the dorms (if there are any), the rules for general conduct and behavior on-campus, and a ton of other shit like safety drills in case of a fire or other catastrophe, laboratory training (if relevant), and on and on. there’s a LOT to cover in the first few weeks. you’ll probably sign a bunch of forms that say “i have read the rules” in legalese, so that there is proof that you have been made aware of the rules.
this orientation will include, or be closely followed by, a class on scientific work.
this course will cover the scientific method, scientific literature, scientific citations (in the specific style of your field and university), the formatting of all your submissions (there’s usually a template you are supposed to use, though this is somewhat dependant on the teacher of any given class.)
there will also be sections on scientific language: the difference between a scientific theory and a “theory” in casual language, what a scientific paper really is and how to tell the difference between a high quality and a low quality paper (or if the paper is just complete nonsense.), and so forth.
this is were the student in the OP almost certainly learned how the assignment given was supposed to be written.
there’s literally entire classes for this specific thing.
and yeah, that’s because it’s actually difficult to do properly!
there’s nothing “unfair”, or “unexpected”, or “insufficiently clear” about this work assignment.
it can seem that way to someone who hasn’t been to university, but to everyone who has, it’s clear as day.
there is never a need to point out things like “you need to use proper citations in your work”, or “you need to follow the scientific method”, because this has already been covered and is then expected in damn near every assignment afterwards.
it’s the expected standard.
so there are two possibilities here:
either the student hasn’t absorbed the material of the previously mentioned class, and just kinda winged it, hoping for the best, and is thus simply an exceedingly bad scientist, which means the failure was entirely deserved.
…or they did it on purpose, and the failure was entirely deserved.
my money is definitely on the latter.
TL;DR:
she damn well knew this submission would be disqualified.
because all students know this.
it’s literally the scientific method, and thus one of the very first things they teach you at university.
hope this clears up why none of this is explicitly mentioned in the assignment, but feel free to ask more questions!