Coursework Evaluation

Requirements The enquiry must be based on a range of sources (either primary or secondary or both) The enquiry must be accompanied by a bibliography and an evaluation of approximately 500 words providing a critical evaluation of the sources used. This evaluation should include a brief bibliography.

How the Evaluation is Marked A02(a) marks Analysis and evaluation of a range of appropriate source material with discrimination Level Provides some comment on one or two sources Level Provides some comment on a limited range of relevant sources, with reference to utility and reliability Level Provides some evaluation of a good range of relevant sources, appreciating utility and reliability Provides some analysis and discrimination between sources but lacks some development on their relative merits Level Provides strong evaluation of a good range of relevant general and more specialised sources Analyses sources and discriminates effectively between them, offering a supported judgement on their relative merits Level Analyses a very good range of relevant, specialised and challenging sources and provides a strong evaluation of their relative merits Displays an impressive understanding of source material and discriminates very effectively to provide some well supported judgements

How to do this 1.Select your range of 4-6 sources 2.Describe them – author, intended audience, date, context (in terms of interpretations), motive 3.Assess them in terms of utility – in other words what lines of enquiry were they particular useful for and what were they less useful for 4.Assess them in terms of reliability – in other words can you trust and corroborate what they say, do they show bias or objectivity and in what ways Make sure you back up statements about utility and reliability with evidence and argument.

Motive You need to show an understanding of motive - why did the author produce the source? You also need to take into account the background, nationality, culture, religion, politics etc. of the author and decide whether this may have had some bearing on how things have been interpreted in the source

Utility When thinking about usefulness The key trigger here is an understanding of what your line of enquiry is. For instance a biased source might be extremely useful if you are investigating the opinions of a particular group at a particular time, but less useful if you were asked to investigate "the facts" of an event. Historians are specialists in different areas – social, economic, political history – this may have some bearing on the usefulness of a source to you

Reliability Reliability: Factors affecting reliability Questions to consider for Written Sources Was the author an eyewitness and if so how long since the events did the writing take place? Did the author have access to all the relevant facts? Did the author have access to a variety of different sources? Is there evidence of balance in the source? Under what circumstances was the author writing - was he/she free to speak his/her mind freely? Was the author trying to persuade people to share his/her views? If the source is all opinion is it opinion typical of others at the time? Can the views expressed in the source be corroborated?

The Bibliography Make sure you use Harvard style referencing. This generator will show you how to do it creator/index.htm