Flight in Birds – Vertebrate Biodiversity
Vertebrate Biodiversity – Assessment 3: Essay
Assessment weight: 35% of total mark for unit
Task: Write an essay on Flight in birds
Critically evaluate hypotheses for the evolution of the trait, examine how function is related to structure, and compare and contrast the expression of the trait among vertebrate biodiversity.
Style: A scientific essay. In a scientific essay the aim is to critically examine a topic using published scientific studies (i.e. peer-reviewed journal articles and authoritative texts) to support your arguments. An essay differs from a report in that an essay does not have the structure of Abstract, Introduction, Methods, etc. However, an essay does need to have a structure and you can use subheadings if you think they help the reader. There are resources available that can provide help with how to write a scientific essay (both online advice and – often more reliably – published books).
Scientific essays typically have the following structure: Introduction to the topic, where the topic is defined and placed into the context of broader related theories, and an outline is provided on how you will approach the topic, giving readers a guide as to the structure of the essay; review of the relevant literature, where you should explain different perspectives on the topic and critically evaluate the support for these perspectives based on the results of published scientific studies (i.e. synthesising and critically evaluating the strength of evidence from the available data); and interpretation and conclusions, where you should attempt to draw conclusions based on the state of current knowledge, point to remaining important unknown aspects of the topic and make suggestions about where further research might be required to better understand the topic. These are general parts of the structure of a scientific essay and should not necessarily be used as sub-headings.
You should take note of the four criteria that will be assessed when marking the essay, each of which has an equal 25% weighting to the overall mark:
description and explanation of the essay topic
critical thinking skills
communication of information, including structure and logical flow of arguments use of source material
Length: 3000 words (+/- 500 words). An essay that is much less than 3000 words is unlikely to adequately satisfy the marking criteria. A 10% reduction in mark (out of a total of a 100% mark)
will be imposed automatically for every 500 words less than or greater than the 3000 word limit (i.e. for essays with less than 2500 or greater than 3500 words).
For example, essays with 2750 or 3250 words would not lose marks automatically (although an extra 250 words could have been advantageous), whereas an essay with 2250 words would automatically lose 10% (because it is between 500 and 1000 words less than 3000 words), and an essay with only 1750 words would automatically lose 20% (because it is between 1000 and 1500 words less than 3000 words).
Such reductions because of word length are independent of grading the essay against the marking criteria The word length excludes the references. Please indicate the word length (excl. references) on the title page.
Format:
Use the following headings: Title, Student name and number, Word count (excl. references), Essay body, References.
Use 12 size font (e.g. Calibri, Times New Roman or similar font) and 1.5 or 2 times line spacing.
Add line numbers (continuous).
References: Cite references in your text using what is called the Harvard WesternSydU style. You do not need to include a web URL. Be consistent with your formatting. See here: https://library.westernsydney.edu.au/main/guides/referencing-citation
Ensure you correctly write the scientific names of organisms (i.e. using binomial nomenclature, with correct capitalisation and in italic font), e.g. Homo sapiens.
Submit your essay as a PDF file using the Turnitin link provided in vUWS under the folder for the Essay Assessment.
Turnitin from iParadigms is a web-based text-matching software that identifies and reports on similarities between documents. See here for information about the Turnitin software: https://library.westernsydney.edu.au/main/guides/turnitin
