THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF LAW GUIDELINES ON THE PRESENTATION AND SUBMISSION OF ASSESSED COURSEWORK

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1 THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF LAW GUIDELINES ON THE PRESENTATION AND SUBMISSION OF ASSESSED COURSEWORK These guidelines are intended to clarify the School s rules on the presentation and submission of coursework. They apply to all forms of assessed coursework (essays; court reports &c.) but not to dissertations for which there are a separate set of guidelines. These guidelines apply to coursework undertaken by all students studying law (LLB and BA) course units in the School of Law, but not to visiting students (including those on ERASMUS and SOCRATES schemes) nor to coursework undertaken by students studying for the Certificate in Legal Studies. A separate set of coursework guidelines is available for these students. Different guidelines apply also to course units taken primarily by students doing criminology course units on the BSocSc in Criminology and Social Policy and BA Criminology programmes. A failure to comply with any of the rules laid out in these guidelines, or a failure to correctly follow the particular instructions for an individual coursework, may result in the examiners refusing to accept your work and a mark of zero being recorded. Furthermore, breaches of certain rules, in particular those relating to plagiarism, are disciplinary matters which may attract a further sanction. It is therefore important that you read and understand these guidelines. A copy of these guidelines is on the ManLaw web site. You will be asked to sign a declaration that you have read these guidelines when you submit your work, and that you are aware that your work will be subject to checks through plagiarism detection software. If you do not understand any part of these guidelines you should seek the advice of your academic adviser or the Examinations Officer (see also 6 below). 1.1 Anonymous Marking 1. Presentation of Coursework All coursework is marked anonymously. Therefore, your name should not appear on the work. Rather, your University membership card number must be entered on the cover sheet and at the top of each page of the essay or court report. 1.2 Presentation (a) Your work must be typewritten or word processed. (b) Your work should be in 12 point Times New Roman script (or equivalent) and doublespaced (the text and quotations should be in this format but this requirement does not apply to footnotes which may be set out in an appropriately compact style ). (c) Your work should be submitted on A4 size paper. The margins at the top and bottom and the left and right of the page should be set at 1 inch. Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

2 (d) Sources of quotations used should be listed in a full bibliography at the end of the piece of work (see also 4 below). 1.3 Length (a) For courses in which the assessed coursework element counts for 33.33% of your final mark, the maximum length of the coursework is 2500 words (the word count should include all text other than the footnotes and bibliography but see 1.3(c) below). (b) For courses in which the assessed coursework element counts for 50% of your final mark, the maximum length of the coursework is 4000 words (the word count should include all text other than the footnotes and bibliography but see 1.3(c) below). (c) Footnotes should contain material that is merely incidental to the main text. Footnotes should not normally comprise any more than 20% of the total length of the work. The inclusion of significant amounts of material in footnotes will be treated as an attempt to circumvent the limits laid out in 1.3(a) and (b) (above) and will be penalised. (d) The following penalties will apply if your work exceeds the limits set out above: (i) if the work is less than 10% over the limit, there will be no penalty; (ii) if the work is more than 10% but less than 20% over the limit, then 5 marks will be deducted from the mark awarded; (iii) if the work is more than 20% but less than 50% over the limit, then 15 marks will be deducted from the mark awarded; (iv) if the work is more than 50% but less than 100% over the limit, then 30 marks will be deducted from the mark awarded; and (v) if the work is more than 100% over the limit then the work will not be marked and a mark of zero will be recorded. 1.4 Copies paper and electronic To guard against the possibility of your work being lost once it is submitted you are strongly advised to retain your own copies, as paper and electronic versions. 2. What is looked for in a coursework essay (a) The main purpose of the exercise is to assess how well you have understood a topic by writing on it at length in a clear, logical, and informed manner. You will be expected: to have consulted, as a minimum, the principal sources of information; to have read widely; to analyse issues well; to reason articulately; to put forward your own arguments, ideas, and conclusions; to write clearly and relevantly. (b) Read the sources, starting with the general (e.g. textbooks) and working through more focused material (e.g. relevant parts of White Papers). You are going to need a bibliography, so keep a careful note of your reading. When you have done your reading, plan your answer. You may find that the essay can be broken down into distinct sections. By all means use a few headings in the text. Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

3 (c) Answer the question set or follow the instructions for an individual coursework. You will get no credit for irrelevance or where you do not complete the coursework as instructed. Be critical where you think it is justified. Your reasoned opinions are important. Try to write simply and clearly. Avoid long sentences. (d) Whatever method of citation you use, be consistent. For more detailed guidance see the Essay Writing Guide available on manlaw (Examinations and Assessments). 3.1 Submission Dates 3. Submission of Coursework (a) All Semester 1 coursework must be submitted to the Addleshaw Booth seminar room, , Williamson building, on Tuesday 20 January 2009 between 10am and 3.30pm only. Submission may be accepted up to 10 minutes late, but after that you will not be able to submit it until the next day and will incur a late submission penalty. (b) All Semester 2 coursework must be submitted to the Addleshaw Booth seminar room, , Williamson building on Wednesday 6 May 2009 between 10am and 3.30pm only. Submission may be accepted up to 10 minutes late, but after that you will not be able to submit it until the next day and will incur a late submission penalty. (c) Computers, discs, and printers go wrong. Such problems will not excuse late submission. You should aim, therefore, to print out the final version some days before the deadline to give you extra time to overcome any emergency. It would also allow time for you to read through the essay again and to spot any lapses which may have eluded you. 3.2 Submission of Paper and Electronic Versions of your coursework You are required to submit your coursework as the paper version and electronically, on a CD, suitably labelled with your name, student number and course unit code. You must submit both together, on time, for the work to count as being received on time. You will be asked to sign a statement that the paper copy and electronic copy are identical, and to confirm that you are aware that the electronic copy will be used in plagiarism detection software. You should also be aware that if the CD you submit is blank, or if you have saved your document in a format which is not Microsoft Word, late penalties will apply (see 3.4 below for more details) 3.3 Submission Formalities The coursework must be accompanied by an assessed coursework feedback sheet and two cover sheets which will be available from the Student Common Room (3 rd floor Williamson Building) a few weeks before the submission date. On submission of the coursework, the second cover sheet will be stamped and returned to you as a receipt. It is important that you keep this receipt as evidence that you have submitted your work on time. Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

4 3.4 Late Submission The requirement as to meeting the submission date will be rigorously applied, and you are hereby given notice that assessed coursework, both electronic and/or paper version, not submitted in time will be subject to the standard Faculty of Humanities penalty scheme, as follows: (a) A deduction of 10 marks for the first day late (which means from 10 minutes late until the close of the appropriate Law School Office on the next working day), then 5 extra marks deduction for each further day late, including weekends. (b) The consequences of the late submission of coursework may be varied at the discretion of the Teaching and Learning Committee (which will normally delegate this responsibility to the Director Teaching and Learning; the Examinations Officer and the LLB Programme Director). Exceptional circumstances relating to the late submission will be taken into account by this Committee. Students wishing to make appeal against the consequences of the late submission of coursework should enquire in the UG Office. Please note that evidence of mitigating circumstances is required for an appeal to be successful. 3.5 Applications for Extension to the Submission Date (a) In exceptional circumstances, such as ill health, you may be allowed to submit coursework later than as specified in 3.1 (above) provided that an extension to the submission date has been granted by the Examinations Officer. Other staff members, including Course Unit Directors, do not have authority to permit an extension to the submission deadline. (b) An application for an extension of the submission date must be made in advance of the normal date of submission. Forms requesting an extension are available from the School UG Office. The completed form, together with supporting evidence of the exceptional circumstances, should be submitted to the Examinations Secretary (Sandra Mounier) in the School UG Office. Requests for coursework extensions must be received by the Exams Secretary by 4pm on the day before the relevant submission date provided in section 3.1 above. Any requests received after that time will not be considered, and if you submit your work late, you will be entitled (as per section 3.4 above) to appeal against the application of a late coursework penalty. (c) The Examinations Officer will consider all requests for extensions to the deadline for submission of coursework taking into account the evidence presented. However an extension will only be granted in exceptional circumstances. Computer, printer or disc malfunctions are not good reasons for late submission. Extensions must be obtained in advance and no extensions will be granted retrospectively (but note 3.4(b) above). 4. Plagiarism and Collusion (important: also see final page of guidance) All work submitted by you must be your own work. Plagiarism is the theft or use of someone else s work without proper acknowledgment, presenting the material as if it were your own. The Law School uses plagiarism detection software to check students work, and you are required to submit your work electronically for this purpose. The University regards Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

5 plagiarism as a serious academic offence, equated with cheating in examinations, and the consequences are severe. Coursework submitted for assessment must be your own work unless, in the case of group projects, a joint effort is expected and is indicated as such. Unacknowledged direct copying from the work of another person, or the close paraphrasing of somebody else s work, is plagiarism. This applies to copying both from other students work and from published sources such as books, reports or journal articles. Plagiarised material may originate from any source. It is as serious to use material from the World Wide Web or from computer based encyclopaedia or literature archives, as it is to use material from printed sources, if it is not properly acknowledged. Use of quotations or data from the work of others is entirely acceptable and is often very valuable provided that the source of the quotation or data is given. Failure to provide a source or put quotation marks around material that is taken from elsewhere gives the appearance that the comments are ostensibly your own. When quoting word for word from the work of another person quotation marks or indenting (setting the quotation in from the margin) must be used and the source of the quoted material must be acknowledged. A reference to a work in the bibliography is not considered sufficient acknowledgement. Paraphrasing, when the original statement is still identifiable and has no acknowledgement, is plagiarism. Taking a piece of text, from whatever source, and substituting words or phrases with other words or phrases is plagiarism. Any paraphrase of another person s work must have an acknowledgement to the source. It is not acceptable to put together unacknowledged passages from the same or from different sources linking these together with a few words or sentences of your own and changing a few words from the original text: this is regarded as over dependence on other sources, which is a form of plagiarism. Direct quotations from an earlier piece of your own work, if un attributed, suggests that your work is original, when in fact it is not. The direct copying of your own writings qualifies as plagiarism if the fact that the work has been or is to be presented elsewhere is not acknowledged. Plagiarism is a serious offence and will always result in imposition of a penalty. In deciding upon the penalty the University will take into account factors such as your year of study, the extent and proportion of the work that has been plagiarised and your apparent intent. The penalties that can be imposed range from a minimum of a zero mark for the work (with or without allowing resubmission) through the down grading of degree class, the award of a lesser qualification (e.g. a pass degree rather than honours, a certificate rather than diploma) to disciplinary measures such as suspension or expulsion. Students are advised to read the section on writing style and plagiarism in the Law School Handbook, a copy of which may be downloaded from the web page at Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

6 5. Examination and Feedback Assessed coursework will be sent to the relevant external examiner along with your examination paper. It will be dealt with as part of the examination process and will not be returned to you. The mark for the coursework will be made available at the same time as the marks for examination papers. The assessed coursework feedback form will be returned to you as follows: semester 1 at the time of release of semester 1 exam results; semester 2 Induction week, the following September (semester two feedback is only provided for returning students). 6. Contact Information If you have any queries concerning these guidelines, your academic adviser, or one of the following will be able to help you: UG Examinations Secretary (Room 3.05) tel: ; e mail: sandra.mounier@manchester.ac.uk Examinations Officer contact via Examinations Secretary above UG Office staff (Room 3.05) tel: or /7552/3560 Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,

7 Plagiarism is presenting the ideas, work or words of other people without proper, clear and unambiguous acknowledgement. Remember: no matter what pressure you may be under to complete an assignment, you should never succumb to the temptation to take a short cut and use someone else s material inappropriately. No amount of mitigating circumstances will get you off the hook, and if you persuade other students to let you copy their work, they risk being disciplined as well. Why you should not plagiarise: You WILL be caught!! The penalties can be very severe eg exclusion, suspension, loss of credit (you will only get a pass degree), resubmission, or reduction of marks (you will be failed!) You will not have learnt anything Your ethics will be corrupted, which can be noted on your permanent academic record Any proven charges will be reflected in any referees reports Your marks will not improve you will get higher grades if you can develop your own ideas, and not steal someone else s. You can be penalised even if you have not intended to plagiarise. Unintentional plagiarism will still be dealt with severely. The University plagiarism policy can be found in the School of Law Handbook, and at: guidancefor students.pdf You may also find it useful to look at the following: which provides guidance on essay writing and referencing. If it doubt, ask a member of academic staff. Assessed Coursework Guidelines for Law School UG degree programmes,