COIT20249Assessment Details

Assessment item 4—Portfolio

Due date: / See page 2 for details about submission deadlines for each item. / ASSESSMENT
Weighting: / 30% / 4
Length: / Depends on each activity

Objectives

This assignment is designed to develop a portfolio of resources that you can use during your degree.The compilation of your Portfolio is progressive throughout the term. Please refer to the UnitProfile to see how this assessment item relates to the Unit Learning Outcomes.

These objectives will be measured by the ‘closeness of fit’ to meeting the assessment requirements and the marking criteria.

General Assessment Criteria

Assessments provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to achieve the required standard. To do this, assessment responses need to be both clear and easy to understand. If not, the University cannot determine that students have demonstrated their knowledge and skills. Assessments will, therefore, be marked accordingly including the potential for 0 (zero) marks where relevant.

All assessment items must focus on the topics given in the specifications for each item. Any assessment items outside the required topic may be awarded 0 (zero) marks.

All portfolio items require students to write about your views, reflections and/or experiences from a personal viewpoint. Therefore, all items must be written in first person unless other requirements are stated in a portfolio item.Various written communication conventions have been discussed in the unit content and you should follow the writing styles appropriate for each assessment item. Do NOT simply write in ‘conversational’ style even when writing in ‘first person’ perspective.

The length of eachsubmissionmust be within the recommended range. If the submission significantly exceeds the maximum word count or the page length the marker will stop marking.

If you use Track Changes when writing your submissions, you must ensure that the submitted document is the finaland correctversion of the document. That is, if your submitted document contains Track Changes or Comments or any other editing marks it may be awarded 0 (zero) marks. It is your responsibility to submit the final and correct version of your Portfolio items.

Files that are auto-submitted will not be reverted to draft status except in extenuating circumstances. It is your responsibility not to leave draft assessments in Moodle at the due date and time if the files are not ready to be submitted for marking.

Academic Integrity

Students must write the Portfolio items themselves. You may be asked to prove that you have written the Portfolio items. You should keep evidence that you have written the Portfolio items yourself, for example, early drafts of your Portfolio items.

ALL assignments will be checked for plagiarism (material copied from other students and/or material copied from other sources) using TurnItIn. If you are found to have plagiarised material or if you have used someone else’s words without appropriate referencing, or if you have shared your work with other students, you will be penalised for plagiarism which could result in zero (0) marks for the whole assessment item NOT just the individual submission. In some circumstances a more severe penalty may be imposed.

The University’s Academic Misconduct Procedure is available in the policy portal

Useful information about academic integrity (avoiding plagiarism) can be found at:

CQUniversity referencing guides

Note: You need to ensure that your portfolio submissions are free of any spelling, grammatical and typographical errors before submission.

Formatting and Structure:

Each portfolio item should demonstrate a logical flow of discussion, and be free from typographical, spelling and grammatical errors. They should be prepared in MS-Word (or equivalent) using 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing and margins of 2.54 cm.Check each assessment page for any other specific requirements.

Students may use separate title/cover pages for each submission. Cover/title pages are not considered as a part of the word or page length.

Submission

Submit each file individually into Moodle using the appropriate Portfolio links in the Assessment block for Assessment item 4 on the Moodle Unit website. Please note there should be four (4) files submitted; one file for each portfolio item. Be sure to check that the correct file is submitted for each portfolio item.

The due date for this assignment is in different Weeks:

Portfolio_1 is due at 4:00 pm onFriday of Week 7

Portfolios 2, 3 and 4 are due at 4:00 pm on Friday of Week 12.

It is STRONGLY recommended that students complete the work during the term using the timeframe suggested in the Requirements section below.

All uploaded documents must be fully submitted for marking. At the due date of the assessment Moodle will auto-submit files that have been uploaded and left as a draft. However, any files uploaded after the due date must be manually submitted. This means thatif you have been granted an extension or are uploading a late assessment (after the due date) you must complete the Moodle submission process. Further details on completing the submission process are available via the ‘Moodle Help for Students’ link in the Support block of your Moodle website.

If your report is left as a draft in Moodle after the due date it will accrue a late penalty. Late submissions will attract penalties at 5% per day of the total available mark for the individual assessment item. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)at

Portfolio Items

PORTFOLIO_1: Annotated Bibliographies and Recommendations (10 marks)

Background

COIT20249 Assessment 3 is a Report for which you have to use at least 10 recent references and write several recommendations. At least 6 of thesereferencesmust be academic references which are peer reviewed journal or conference papers and/or textbooks. Portfolio 1 requires students to begin their researchby locating and evaluating twoacademic references that you can usefor the Report.

Portfolio 1 Requirements

  1. Find 2 peer reviewed journal articles or conference proceedingsthat relate to your Report topic for this Term, using the ARE and Triple R frameworksyou learnt in Weeks 2 and 3. Both references must be from the last 5 years (dated 2013 onwards) and must bedirectly relevant to the technology focus of the case study of the Report (Assessment 3). Do not use textbooks, working papers or government papers/reports etc.as references for this assessment (Portfolio_1). Check with your local lecturer if you are not sure about the papers you have selected.

In Week 3, you learnt about Annotated Bibliographies, in Week 5 you learnt about referencing, and in Week 6 you learnt about writing recommendations.

  1. Write an annotation and a recommendation for each of the references using those skills:
  • Annotation.
  • See pp. 132 – 134 in your Textbook and refer to Week 3 materials on Annotated Bibliographies.
  • The reference must be formatted in CQU APA style. You must provide the DOI or the URL for the selected reference.
  • Write the annotation in paragraph form.
  • Recommendation.
  • Select a finding or a suggestion relevant to your report topic from the conclusion/findings in the article.
  • Write a recommendation based on that selected finding/suggestion, formatted correctly as covered in Week 6 Report Writing Guidelines.
  • The recommendation must make sense in light of what you have written in the annotation.
  1. Your written submission PLUS BOTH references must be uploaded into Moodle.You must download the articles you selected, and upload them into Moodle with your submission as evidence of accuracy of the articles.You must submit 3 files in total for Portfolio 1.If one or both references are not accessible by the marker, your submission will not be marked for that reference and the sections covered by it will receive 0 marks.

Marking criteria

For each reference:

  • One or both of the references will NOT be graded if either of themis:
  • a reference that was provided for PA3 assessment,
  • not directly relevant to the report topic for the current term,
  • older than 5 years (before 2013 - see report requirements, all references must be from 2013 and onwards), or
  • not an academic reference (not a peer reviewed journal and/or conference article).
  • If the referencesare not uploaded to Moodlethat will also result in0 marks.

Eachannotation and recommendation will be marked as follows:

  • Annotation (3 marks)
  • Correctly formatted academic reference in CQU APA style (0.75 mark),
  • Summary of reference, in 1 to 2 sentences (0.25 marks)
  • Evaluation of author credentials, in 1 or 2 sentences (0.25 marks)
  • Summary of key findings and themes, in 2 - 3 sentences (0.5 marks)
  • Explanation of how research has been conducted for this paper, in 1 or 2 sentences (0.25 marks)
  • Evaluation of the reference – usefulnessand limitations of this reference for your report, in 3 - 4 sentences (1 mark).
  • Recommendation (1.75 marks)
  • Correctly formatted recommendation as per the Report Writing Guidelines from Week 6 (0.75 marks)
  • Quality of the recommendation – relevance to the finding/conclusion in your annotation and to your Report Topic for the current term. That is, the recommendation makes sense in light of what was written in the annotation (1mark).
  • Common criteria (0.5 marks)
  • Grammatically correct annotation with no spelling mistakes,
  • Well-structured annotation in a single paragraph for each reference - easy to read and understand,
  • Within the recommended length for each reference and submitted as an MS-Word file.

Notes:

  • This assessment should NOT be written in first person perspective.Write in the third person perspective.See example in the Week 3 PPT for Annotated Bibliographies and the Week 6 Report Writing Guidelines for Recommendations.
  • Each annotation should be approximately 150 – 200 words but comply with the requirements for the number of sentences.
  • Each recommendation should be concise and no more than 40 – 50 words (maximum length).

Example layout

Reference 1:

Insert the reference, formatted in CQU APA style. Include the DOI or URL if available.

Annotation: written as a single paragraph – see requirements and marking criteria above.

Recommendation: correctly formatted as per the referencing guidelines in Week 6 materials.

Reference 2:

Insert the reference, formatted in CQU APA style. Include the DOI or URL if available.

Annotation: written as a single paragraph – see requirements and marking criteria above.

Recommendation: correctly formatted as per the referencing guidelines in Week 6 materials.

Please note that a reference that may not receive any marks as a result of plagiarism and/or other misconduct matters may still be suitable to be used in the Report. Also a Reference that received high marks in Portfolio 1 may become irrelevant if the final version of your submission changes direction closer to the Report deadline. You can use these references for your report but use your judgement before you finalise the Report. As clearly mentioned in the ARE topic, Research and Evaluation are iterative in the ARE process.

PORTFOLIO_2: Reflective Writing (5 marks)

Requirements

Think about a negative experience you have had in the past, for example a job interview, conflict in a work situation or a disagreement with a friend or family member. Choose an experience where the skills learnt in COIT20249 would have helped you. Reflect back on that one specific experienceand write a short reflective analysis about how you would handle that experience differently now by using skills you have learnt this term. Your response must clearly consider if any of the skills you have learnt from COIT20249 would have helped if you had those skills at the time, or if you can use those skills in future for a different outcome if you have a similar experience. Clearly identify the skill/s from COIT20249 you have considered.

If the soft skills covered in COIT20249 would not have been helpful, reflect on what other soft skills would have been helpful or if you did not have to improve your soft skills (clearly explain the reasons in that case).

Note if you are repeating COIT20249 you cannot reuse your reflective writing submission from a previous term. Please discuss with your local lecturer before the deadline if there is any problem with this requirement.

Students discuss this portfolio item in Week 7 but, most probably, will write it later. However, all students must plan to submit the assessment at the end of Week 12 as required.

Describe the experience including your exact contribution for the outcome. Demonstrate what you have learnt from the experience, describe how you would handle a similar situation differently in the future, and evaluate the positives and negatives of the experience.

Your submission should cover the three key points on reflective writing (see below). This should be approximately 450 words in length.

The key points to consider when writing reflectively are:

1. You need to demonstrate what you have learned from a particular experience not just describe what happened.

2. There is no right or wrong answer—reflective writing is about what you learned from the experience.

3. Ask yourself the following questions and give your responses in your writing: Why did X happen? What did I do in X situation? What were the positive and negative outcomes in the situation? How might I do things differently next time? What have I learnt and how does this knowledge contribute to my development?

(McCulloch & Reid, 2015, p. 131)

Note 1: You should re-read pages 130-132 of the textbook to confirm your knowledge about the technique of reflective writing.

Note 2: This assessment is about evaluating yourself and your experience; it is NOT about evaluating others. Make sure you have an active role in the experience you are using for this reflection.

Marking Criteria

Your submission will be marked as follows. Write under the relevant headings (separate paragraph) per each section as given below.

  1. Reflection (4.5 marks):
  1. Include a brief description of the negative experienceyou had in the past(0.5 mark).
  2. Reflect on how you contributed to the experience. What aspects of your behaviour made this situation better or worse?What exactly did you do and were your action/s positive or negative? This is not about what any others did but what you did (1 mark).
  3. Demonstrate whatyou learned from the experience (1 mark).
  4. Describe what you would do tohandle the experience differently in the future using any of the skills you learnt in COIT20249 or if these skills wouldn’t help, what other skills would be useful. Otherwise, write why you may not have to do anything different (1 mark)

Note: You have to focus on only one of the requirements in point 4 (whichever is applicable to your experience).

  1. Evaluate both the positive and negatives impacts of your overall experience (1 mark).

Note: This is about the overall lesson learnt from the experience and not about what you did as per point 2 above.

Use the three key points listed above to check that you have written reflectively about your experience. Ensure that you have addressed all 5 points.

  1. Common criteria (0.5 marks)
  2. Grammatically correct with no spelling mistakes,
  3. Well-structured reflection, written under separate headings and paragraphs for each of the five points above. Easy to read and understand,
  4. Within the recommended length (400 – 500 words) and submitted as an MS-Word file.

PORTFOLIO_3: Responding to an Ethical Scenario (5 marks)

Requirements

In week 9 you learnt about making decisions in various ethical situations, about the Australian Computer Society (ACS), and its Code of Ethics and the Code of Professional Conduct. Understanding who you are and how you relate to others in both your personal and work life can make you aware of the values that are important to you as well as the values that you may need to work on to improve your professional standing. This portfolio item is designed to make you think about how to respond to an ethical scenario as a good ICT professional. As you are training to be an ICT professional you should refer to the ACS Code of Ethics and/or ACS Code of Professional Conduct in your response (referred below as ACS documents). Your response should be approximately 400 words.

Scenario:

Ghost writing is a term used to describe a situation where students submit work for assessment that was written by someone else. The original author is not mentioned and the student claims that they wrote it themselves. This is a very serious form of academic misconduct.

You are a student at Central Queensland University. Getting your degree is important to you as you want to get good grades so that you can get a good job. It is imperative to you that you work hard to create all the assessment submissions yourself except when it is a group assessment. It is by working hard to achieve good grades that you will ensure that you are best-placed to successfully apply for a good job. Recently you heard that some students in your class who you are friendly with are paying Ghost writers to complete their assessment items. This concerns you as you think they will get good grades for their assessment items when they have not written the assessment themselves. This is not fair to all those students who wrote the assessment themselves. You feel that you should tell the lecturer what your friends are doing but you are scared of losing your friends.