Online task 7

Students should submit the outline of their research paper. This is crucial because despite repeated discussions on what a research paper should look like, what parts it should contain, what kind of research questions should be asked and how data should be analyzed, participants will be hesitant as to what they are expected to do. Therefore, it is advisable to ask them to hand in an outline, as this makes them think about the questions they might have. On the other hand, the submitted proposals will provide the tutor with a better understanding of the potential difficulties students may have in writing up their ideas for a research paper. The tutor will provide feedback in writing, by indicating the strong and weak parts of the outline, add comments and ask students to edit and develop their proposals into research papers by a negotiated date.

Face-to-face session 3:

Students are expected to write an in-class essay in which they reflect critically on an indicated topic, based on their readings. While asking students to write an in-class essay in one of the few face-to-face sessions may seem like a luxury, and you may well want to spare precious in-person instruction time for discussions instead. While the latter is a perfectly reasonable option, some teaching and learning contexts call for opportunities where students can exhibit their critical essay writing skills and language proficiency in a more controlled setting than the online platform where they post their tasks as a rule. By this I mean that some of the students who attend our MA courses need to be filtered for language proficiency and this may not be possible if they keep editing their writing based on the tutor's or peers' suggestions, however useful these may be from the point of view of long-term development. Therefore, students are required to produce a coherent written text which will be assessed on content knowledge (60%) and on correct academic English (40%).