University Subjects
ATS1314: Human Rights 1
ATS1314: Human Rights 1
- University
- Monash University
- Subject Link
- View Subject
- Tags
- Law Human rights law
Litigator
7 years ago
- Assessment
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70% internal marks (10x1% Weekly reading quizzes, 1x10% article analysis, 1x10% essay plan, 1x40% essay) and 30% exam
- Comments
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As someone who has a passion for business/numbers and objectivity, my first exposure to some form of philosophy was somewhat of a hard pill to swallow at first. Weeks are divided into topics that are rather basic yet informative, such as; Are human rights universal, womens right, cultural rights...
Arts students are described as pretty liberal and open minded and I can say that a select few are quite radical. Some students really dont give a shit while others nearly have a heart attack if they hear a 'politically incorrect' phrase or term. It's incredibly hard sometimes to have group conversations without offending someone. The week on 'Human Rights & Torture' was quite interesting. There seemed a large number of students that were oblivious to what governments do to keep their citizens safe. Some found it disturbing that terrorists were tortured for information, and one even exclaimed during group discussions that most detainees at Guantanamo Bay should be set free since they were not formally prosecuted by a court of law. However, these types of students are not the majority.
I went into arts units with the sole purpose of trying to achieve good marks. I achieved that, and I actually cant say much about the learning because i was focused on maximizing efficiency and marks.
For example:
Week 1-3 are topics for the first assigment
Week 4-8 or (4-10) are topics for essays
Week 9-12 or (11-12) are the topics for the exam.
Which means, i only did the readings and looked at the lectures for Week 1, 6, 11, 12 and received a HD mark. The weekly online quizzes which were based on the readings were easy and you could flick through the readings looking for the key words and bang you got the answer you needed.
Honestly, you are gonna be taught a lot of topics that are all under the broad definition of Human Rights, some shit is interesting, some shit is boring. If you are planning to do an arts degree, most weekly topics convert into an entire unit in 2nd and 3rd year, and you can pick the ones you find interesting in these broad first year units.
Also, Robbie is good bloke. He engages well and provides alot of feedback for assigments. - Lecturer(s)
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Robbie Arrell
- Past Exams Available
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Not needed, since exam questions are given.
- Rating
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3.5/5
- Recorded Lectures
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Yes
- Textbook Recommendation
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No textbook required except for reader, highly needed.
- Workload
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2x1 hour weekly lectures + 1hour weekly tutorial
- Year & Semester Of Completion
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Semester 1 2016
- Your Mark / Grade
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81 HD
brenden
10 years ago
- Assessment
-
- Assessment Task (AT) 1: Worth 10%. Three short-answer questions, one devoted to each week's reading for the first three weeks. (Or it might have been two questions based on different readings required from Week Two). There is a word limit of 400 words, which makes it sound easy, because you think "they won't want me to say much in 400 words", but if you don't provide a really comprehensive answer for each question, they'll mark you down, so be very concise and make sure you answer the question with as much information as you can in a little amount of words
. - AT 2: 10%, three short-answer question, 400 word word limit. Same as AT 1, but different questions on different readings.
- AT 3: 40%, an 1800 word essay. There were questions covering Week One through to Week Nine, so you wouldn't be screwed for the essay if you missed something - you could just pick a question that required only one week's reading and do the essay based on that.
- Exam: 40% (obviously), two hour examination in which you should aim to write about 2,000 words, however, they specify very strongly that they care about quality, not quantity. From the way they made it sound, you'd be fine with a really good essay of like 1,600 words - it's really about the argument. I think mine ended up around 1,650. The exam had three prompts, with one prompt devoted to each of Week Ten, Week Eleven, and Week Twelve. In Sem 1, 2013, we got give each of the prompts ahead of time so we could develop our ideas and the exam was testing our understanding of the material and the quality of our arguments, rather than our ability to think on the spot. I should note, they weren't originally going to give us the prompts, but the coordinator had a change of heart, so I'm unsure if they'll stick with this next year.
- Oh, I should also note, there is a tutorial attendance hurdle requirement. I think you could miss three tutorials before they docked you points.
- Assessment Task (AT) 1: Worth 10%. Three short-answer questions, one devoted to each week's reading for the first three weeks. (Or it might have been two questions based on different readings required from Week Two). There is a word limit of 400 words, which makes it sound easy, because you think "they won't want me to say much in 400 words", but if you don't provide a really comprehensive answer for each question, they'll mark you down, so be very concise and make sure you answer the question with as much information as you can in a little amount of words
- Comments
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- Andy and Linda are very fantastic lecturers. Andy has a slight Canadian accent and a fucking brilliant yet subtle sense of humour that gets his point across excellently and has the bonus of giving you a giggle. Linda is also a really great lecturer, but be wary of talking during her lectures, because she will be like "Oi, stop talking." -- Not in an annoying way; every time she told people to shut up, there was a collective sense of "thank you, God those people were dickheads" within the lecture theatre. I also think she isn't a fan of seeing heads on desks - so no sleeping! But yes, she presents the material well and has a very good understanding. Andy could give any lecture and make it interesting because of the way he lectures. Linda's lectures are interesting because the content is interesting AND she presents it in an interesting way, but she isn't blatantly entertaining in and of herself.
- The subject itself was extremely well thought out and very well structured. Each week was a very logical progression from the last, even when you were moving onto a topic that didn't really interconnect with the previous topic in any meaningful way... It's as if each week, I was at the correct level of thinking for whatever topic we were moving on to. Further to the logical structure and progression of the unit, the content itself was very interesting. Of course, I say this assuming you're interested in Human Rights. Andy has conducted research into the rights violations of asylum seekers, and his work was contained within the unit, which was actually pretty genius. A note on the content, though: Whilst it was extremely interesting and gripping, it could occasionally be very emotionally draining. For example, there were times during lectures where I felt like I wanted to vomit because of the sheer atrocity of what was being spoken about, eg. female circumcision. After my first lecture on poverty I got extremely depressed and it threw me off the rails for a day or two. So, just be warned, if you're an overly sensitive person, this unit will challenge you on a personal level - but this is definitely not a reason to avoid the unit - it was still excellent.
- Human Rights Theory 1 and Philosophy: Life, Death and Morality - my evaluation of which is here: Re: Monash University - Subject reviews & ratings - worked in very strong cohesion, as you can imagine. I felt as if taking these subjects in conjunction gave me a strong advantage in both subjects. They go together like two peas in a pod. Human Rights is a very philosophical based subject (it's from the school of Philosophy, after all) - but the philosophy is more concentrated on the Human Rights sphere. In later years, you can take units where you can either be credited with Human Rights OR Philosophy points, because the same unit applies to both areas of study
- The longest reading in Human Rights was Week Three - fifty four pages.
- I should note: everyone struggles with the reading for Week One - Jeremy Benthem's Anarchical Fallacies. It's written in 18th century English so a lot of people had nfi idea what was going on until they got to the tutorial. I found it okay, I just needed to focus a little bit more when I was doing the readings. Week One readings are the hardest readings, so don't think you don't like the unit just after doing Week One (I honestly thought "what the fuck have I gotten myself into" after I had to really knuckle down to understand Week One).
- If you value your sanity (and are aiming for a high grade), keep up to date - or even ahead of - the readings. Because if you fall behind, well... not many people come back ... I think I might have been the only person in my tute to have done the readings on time for the last half of semester once people started getting bogged down with assessments etc.
- Participate in tutorials as much as you can, because it hugely reinforces your knowledge for the essay. I don't take notes in lectures or tutorials, and I think I was much better off than other people who took more notes but discussed things less.
- Lecturer(s)
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Dr Linda Barclay and Dr Andy Lamey
- Past Exams Available
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None. They said if we wanted to practise writing essays, we should go back to AT 3 and write on a prompt that we haven't already written on. Evidently, in Sem 1, 2013, practise exams weren't a problem once they gave us the prompt. You would probably be better off doing the readings that will be tested in the exam and summarising them etc. rather than practicing an essay on readings that won't be assessed in the exam.
- Rating
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5/5
- Recorded Lectures
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Yep, no screen capture so you'll have to download the slides. There were more microphone muffles in the recordings of this unit than other unit, so wagging lectures is sometimes a gamble, as you might have a muffle-obstructed recording.
- Textbook Recommendation
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You have to buy the ATS 1314 Reader, and that is all. You definitely need it.
- Workload
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2 x 1 hour lectures (auto-allocated), 1 x 1 hour tutorial.
- Year & Semester Of Completion
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...Woops. 2013. Semester 1.
- Your Mark / Grade
-
86
- State
- VIC
- Type
- University
- Courses
- 167
- Campuses
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Caulfield Churchill City Clayton Parkville Peninsula
Please note that these statistics simply refer to the information we have in our database. This is not an exhaustive list of courses offered at Monash University. Please refer to the institution's website for the most current information.
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