CLIM1001: Introduction to Climate Change

30% Online Quizzes (Three 10% online quizzes with 40 questions and unlimited time), 10% discussion board participation, 15% group peer review (3 tasks, 5% each - very easy because its just your members in your group saying if you did work or not so if you do your fair share you will get a free 15%), 45% individual component (15% writing a report on a topic and getting it marked by three other peers, 15% quality of feedback you gave to other people you marked, 15% final revised report graded by course staff)

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In terms of a Gen Ed the subject is fairly light in terms of the work load as the assignments are not too lengthy.

One assignment is 3 main quizzes of 10% each that are not too difficult as it tests material you have to read on Moodle and that you can also use while doing the quiz since its online, at home and has unlimited time.

The discussion board participation can be a bit boring at times as the questions people ask can be repetitive however if you make a post like once every week you should get the marks for this part. Also, the posts were largely informal so you didn't have to do in-text referencing each time which makes this part of the course fairly fast and easy to do

The group tasks aspect is an easy way to get marks because although you write a report as a group you never actually get graded on the quality of the report, but rather just your participation in writing the report, which is judged by your group members. So if you do your part then you should get the maximum 15% mark for this

The individual component was worth 45% and is similar to the group report. There are three components to this: 15% initial report that is marked by 3 of your peers at random, 15% mark that you receive for people rating the feedback you gave to others in the previous marking component, 15% final revised report marked by a staff member. In this assignment, you essentially are given a topic and news article that you need to critically analyse in terms of the scientific evidence and other biases that the person may have had when writing their article. The report is around 1500 words in length.

I found the subject overall to be fairly interesting in terms of describing all the aspects associated with climate change and the psychology of climate change as well which is linked to things like laws and public opinion. The assignments are fairly straight forward, however, as there is a peer review marking section for the individual component there is a chance that your mark may not be perfect as some students might mark harder on you than others. If you are someone who is fairly good at writing critical reports or essays similar to English but where you analyse something then this will be a good course for you. An added bonus is it doesn't have a final exam so you save time with that

Online course (there is a group report though so some groups like mine preferred to meet in person)

1.5

No lectures all material is in videos and text on Moodle

No lecturer

All required materials are on Moodle

4

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2018 Sem 1

91