ESSAYS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Lecturers give guidance
Your lecturers will guide you on what to do and when you need to submit your assignments.  If you are in doubt about what is expected, ask your lecturer.

Submitting assignments
You need to submit two typed copies with good margins all round and lines at space-and-a-half or double-spaced.

During office hours you can hand in your assignments at the Theological Office.  Fill in a cover sheet (copies are available in the Theological Common Room) and staple one to each copy of your assignment.

Outside office hours you can put your assignments in the slot at the right-hand side of the glass doors at the rear entrance to the Theological Studies Centre.

Assignments are not accepted by email or fax.

Late assignments
If you hand an assignment in late it will be marked down.  If it is more than two weeks late the lecturer may not accept it.

You may ask for a short extension from the lecturer if you have good reasons.  You must do this before the due date. If the lecturer agrees, it should be noted on the cover sheet, with a signature from the lecturer. You may be asked for a medical certificate or other documentation.

If your study is seriously interrupted and you seek an extension beyond the end of semester, apply in writing to the Dean for a ‘Dean’s extension’, explaining the extraordinary circumstances. You must do this before the due date. If a Dean’s extension is granted, the latest date for submission is four weeks after the end of the exam week of the semester. Your transcript will appear with an ‘E’ on it until your work is marked.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is using the work of others without giving them the credit.  In tertiary study it is seen as stealing from others and is taken very seriously. At Whitley a student who plagiarises will fail the unit immediately.

To avoid plagiarism:

• If you use someone else’s words (that is, quote someone), use quotation marks or an indented paragraph and cite where it came from, including the page number.
• If you use your own words to summarise someone else’s ideas, cite where the material came from, including the page number.
• If you structure your essay the same way as another person’s essay, article or book, acknowledge it.
• If you get anything from the Internet, quote it or cite it just as you would a book or article.

Inclusive language
It is Whitley policy to use inclusive language in both teaching and assignments.

It is not hard to use ‘humankind’ instead of ‘mankind’, and so on.  Sometimes using the plural helps. For example:

‘Disciples are wise to nourish their spiritual health’ instead of
‘The disciple is wise to nourish his spiritual health’.

It is up to students whether they use or avoid male pronouns for God. It is also up to students whether to leave sexist language in quotations or to make them inclusive. An example of acceptable editing follows, using square brackets:

As Paul Tillich says, ‘Theology is about [humankind’s] ultimate concern’.

If you find it difficult to use inclusive language, consult a guide.

Grades
At Whitley you will receive written feedback on each assignment, as one element of the overall learning process.

As part of the Melbourne College of Divinity, the body which grants the degrees and diplomas, Whitley teachers also give grades.  You will get a grade for each assignment and one for the unit overall.  This is what the grades refer to in percentage terms:

Fail    F    less than 50%
Pass    P    50 to 64%
Credit    C    65 to 74%
Distinction    D    75 to 84%
High Distinction    HD    85% or more

Here are some simple guidelines on what each grade means:

F    Inadequate understanding of the subject;  little knowledge of the area;  little insight or reading in evidence.
Doesn’t even know what the questions are.
P    Adequate understanding of information concerning the subject, but little critical awareness or insight shown.
Knows what the questions are.
C    Competent grasp of information on the subject, plus an awareness of some important themes and critical issues.
Knows some of the major answers to the questions.
D    Clear grasp of information and major themes, plus an ability to offer constructive comment on these themes and critical issues.
Able to critique the major answers.
HD    As for D, but showing in addition an ability to integrate the insights from contemporary resources, tradition and personal experience.
Able to provide some answers of their own.

 Clearly other factors come into play as well.  Answering a question which is not quite the question asked will attract a lower grade.  An assignment in which part of the task is completed well but another has been ignored or treated inadequately will also attract a lower grade.  Sufficiently poor expression or poor presentation (such as a missing bibliography or footnotes) may warrant a lower grade.  Poor spelling or grammar begins to be marked down when the marker can’t understand what the student is getting at.

Citing References
There are two main ways to cite references in your assignments, the footnote system and the author-date system.  It doesn’t matter which you choose. And there are many variations on these two basic ways as well.

Here they will be presented very simply, using illustrations. You will find more detail in style guides, both in book form and on nearly every university’s web site.

1       The footnote system
Footnotes are very common in theology.  When you refer to someone’s work—let’s say Richard Bauckham’s book on the Bible and mission — you insert a footnote number (as in this sentence) and give the details in a footnote (at the bottom of the page) or an endnote (at the end of the assignment).  This should be easy on a computer.  If you refer to the same work again—let’s say Bauckham’s book — a shortened citation is enough (as in footnote 4 below).  (‘Ibid.’ and ‘op. cit.’ are used less these days and are a bit complicated, but you may use them.)

At the end of the assignment you put all the cited references in a list called a bibliography.

Some footnote examples
Here are some examples of footnotes for different types of references:

Simple book
Rachel Carson, Silent spring (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1965).
Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, Affluenza: When too much is never enough (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005).

Book with more publishing information
Frederick Mathewson Denny, An introduction to Islam, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1994).
Bruce Duncan, Ending hunger: How far can we go?, Catholic Social Justice Series, No. 51 (North Sydney: Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, 2005).

Edited book
John Parratt, ed. An introduction to Third World theologies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

 Book section (chapter in an edited book)
Joe Remenyi, ‘What is development?’ in Key issues in development, eds. Damien Kingsbury et al (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 22-44.

Journal article
Philip Hughes, ‘Ministry in multicultural contexts’, Pointers 14.4 (Dec 2004): 1-3.
Digby Hannah, ‘Experience of place in Australian identity and theology’, Pacifica 17 (2004): 297-310.

Newspaper article
Juliette Hughes, ‘An intelligent design of the times’, The Age (22 October 2005): 8.

Web site
Bible Society of New South Wales, ‘“The church an insurmountable problem but Jesus is cool”, says research’, <www.jesusallaboutlife.com.au/au.com.allaboutlife.registry/pages/Research.asp>, Date of material 12-9-04, Accessed 16-2-06.
Emergent Village, <www.emergentvillage.com>.

Email message
Joan Smith, <jsmith@unimelb.edu.au>, ‘Theology and universities’, Private email message to Joe Bloggs, <jbloggs@hotmail.com>, 15 February 2006.

Unpublished paper or manuscript
Athol Gill, ‘No justice without reconciliation’, Sermon preached at St Martin's Community Church, Collingwood, Melbourne, 1989.

A bibliography (in the footnote system)
Here is the bibliography which corresponds to the above footnote examples.  A bibliography is always in alphabetical order (by surname of the first author).  Notice how the entries vary a little from footnotes with their name order, full-stops and lack of brackets.

Bible Society of New South Wales. ‘“The church an insurmountable problem but Jesus is cool”, says research’. News Release. <http://www.jesusallaboutlife.com.au/au.com.allaboutlife.registry/pages/Research.asp>. Accessed 16-2-06. Date of material 12-9-04.
Carson, Rachel. Silent spring. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1965.
Denny, Frederick Mathewson. An introduction to Islam. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1994.
Duncan, Bruce. Ending hunger: How far can we go? Catholic Social Justice Series, No. 51. North Sydney: Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, 2005.
Emergent Village. <www.emergentvillage.com>.
Gill, Athol. ‘No justice without reconciliation’. Sermon preached at St Martin's Community Church, Collingwood. Melbourne, 1989.
Hamilton, Clive and Richard Denniss. Affluenza: When too much is never enough. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005.
Hannah, Digby. ‘Experience of place in Australian identity and theology’. Pacifica 17 (2004): 297-310.
Hughes, Juliette. ‘An intelligent design of the times’. The Age (22 October 2005): 8.
Hughes, Philip. ‘Ministry in multicultural contexts’. Pointers 14.4 (Dec 2004): 1-3.
 Parratt, John, ed. An introduction to Third World theologies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Remenyi, Joe. ‘What is development?’ In Key issues in development, eds. Damien Kingsbury et al. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 22-44.
Smith, Joan. <jsmith@unimelb.edu.au>. ‘Theology and universities’. Private email message to Joe Bloggs, <jbloggs@hotmail.com>. 15 February 2006.

2       The author-date system
The author-date system is very common in the social sciences and is quite acceptable in theology.  It uses brief citations in the text, such as ‘(Jones 2005: 82-84)’ and lists the full details only in the reference list at the end.  Footnotes are used only rarely, to explain something.

Common sense rules are followed for the sake of economy.  For example, if the author has just been mentioned, only the date of their work is cited: ‘Gehring (2004) explores house churches in the first century.’

In-text citation
Here are some examples of citing references in the text using the author-date method.  Notice how the different situations are handled:

Teilhard saw spirit and matter almost as if they were the inside and outside of things (Santmire 1985: 160; McDonagh 1986: 79).

In exploring biblical notions of peace Mark Brett (2003) applies them practically.

Deacy’s 2005 book on faith and film broke new ground.

‘Redemption’ is a much contested term these days (Davis, Kendall and O’Collins 2004).  To begin with it is a metaphor from another time (Davis et al 2004: 12).

Is mission best done together as Christians (World Council of Churches 1999)?  It is arguable that unity in mission has never been more important (WCC 1999: 255).

There is a rapidly changing context for discipleship (P Johnson 2002) which calls for innovative approaches (D Johnson 2004).

The views of Australians on religion need to be analysed carefully (Hughes 2004a, 2004b).

Pronouncing the ‘shahadah’ is central to identifying as a Muslim (‘The Islam Page’).

 A reference list (in the author-date system)

Here is a reference list which corresponds to the in-text citations used above.  Note that the date comes early.  A reference list is always arranged alphabetically (by the first author’s surname).

Brett, Mark (2003). ‘Biblical concepts of peace: Pathways to reconciliation’. Rays: MIT Journal of Theology 4 (Feb). 18-40.
Davis, Stephen T, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, eds. (2004). The redemption: An interdisciplinary symposium on Christ as redeemer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deacy, Christopher (2005). Faith in film. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Hughes, Philip (2004a). ‘Ministry in multicultural contexts’. Pointers 14.4 (Dec). 1-3.
Hughes, Philip (2004b). Australian Religious Communities. CD-ROM. 2nd ed. Nunawading, Vic.: Christian Research Association.
‘The Islam Page’ (n.d.). <www.islamworld.net>.
Johnson, Daniel (2004). Ecotourism as tentmaking and development: A case study in innovative mission. Zadok Paper S130. Fitzroy, Vic.: Zadok Institute for Christianity and Society.
Johnson, Philip (2002). ‘Do-it-yourself spirituality’. Working Together (Australian Evangelical Alliance) (Issue 2). 1-4.
McDonagh, Sean (1986). To care for the earth: A call to a new theology. London: Geoffrey Chapman.
Santmire, H Paul (1985). The travail of nature: The ambiguous ecological promise of Christian theology. Philadelphia: Fortress.
World Council of Churches (1999). ‘Mission and evangelism in unity today’. SEDOS Bulletin 31. 243-253.

Further information on citation

There are many guides to citation on the Internet.  Whitley recommends the ‘Chicago style’, which allows either footnotes or author-date citation. One example of a good guide to the Chicago style is that of Ohio State University, at
 <http://library.osu.edu/sites/guides/chicagogd.html>.

If you have more detailed questions, the Chicago style is laid out in a book in the Whitley library edited by Kate Turabian and others:

Turabian, Kate L, John Grossman and Alice Bennett. A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations. 6th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Found in the library at 808.02 TUR)

The Whitley library also has an excellent book for answering nearly every question about style and use of words:

Peters, Pam. The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. (Found at BT86 in the Reference section)

Don’t be worried by minor differences between citation systems.  In the end, there is room for personal preference as long as the information about your references is presented fully, clearly and consistently.