INST1006: The World in Transition

2x essays (60%), mid-term (30%), group presentation (10%)

None, but you do need to be enrolled in B International Studies

This course was so promising. The content is really interesting but the execution was terrible. As a history lover, looking at historical events and seeng how they shaped the world today was very fascinating and the course provided me with a better understanding of different perspectives regarding the world today and how history (and more specifically, colonialism) impacts current events. The course is structured like this: colonial theories are taught in the first few weeks and then there are case studies based on the continents of the world for the rest. Sometimes there were guest lecturers who were experts on certain topics and they were amazing.

What I didn't like, rather, despised were the tutorials and assessments.

I'll start with the tutorials. The tutorials required students, who in groups of 2 were to create a presentation on the lecture and readings from the week prior. What was so annoying about this was these presentations weren't assessed and it took so much time to make them. For some people, they didn't do readings in certain weeks because they didn't want to focus on that specific region of the world for their essays which makes sense, because some of them were ridiculously long (one week had over 150 pages). The tutor just sat at his desk and didn't really foster discussion later and didn't clarify questions on the readings because most of the time students tried to understand the readings but didn't really get them.

The assessments are another story. The mid-term was fine because it was straightforward, but the hand-in tasks... my goodness. Both essays had such vague instructions to "encourage discussion", "room to move", and "creative arguments" to the point where no one knew what they were doing. The essays were framed as totally different tasks, but upon reflection they were so similar I felt like I spent 4500 words repeating myself. The marking is another story in itself, which was very inconsistent (we didn't have marking criteria) and were told what was right or wrong after we had submitted the essays -- and apparently the vague instructions were supposed to allow us to form unique arguments and discuss different things? The group presentation was fine, however, the feedback across different groups contradicted each other.
I'll give points to the content, which speaks for itself because it's super interesting and I liked the guest lecturer thing, but the assessments and marking were awful.

3 - 2 hour lecture, 1 hour tutorial

3/5

Yes

Lecturer - Dr Emma Christopher, Tutor - Dr James Dhizaala

All on Moodle

2.5/5

None

Semester 2, 2018