Major Assessment 1: Written Essay
DUE: Friday of Week 5 by 5 pm (Australian Eastern Standard
Time)
Percentage of Final Mark 20%
• Students must work in groups of two. Note that the ability to
work in teams is one of the graduate attributes required by the
Institution of Engineers Australia.
• Each group will produce an essay on the question given below.
• Final Essays (that are produced via the plagiarism program at
“Turnitin.com”) are to be submitted via “Assignments” on the
Learning Hub with a filename that includes all students’ family
names. Filenames that do not contain two family names will not
be marked. Essays must not include any graphics. Students must
first submit their essay to the plagiarism detector site Turnitin.
(See below.) The originality report from Turnitin is submitted
to the Learning hub for marking. Instructions on submitting to
Turnitin will be given on the Learning Hub
• Students may draw on a variety of resources, including
newspaper articles, magazine and journal articles, and
organisations’ websites. Useful databases include Science
Direct, Lexis-Nexis, Australian Public Affairs Full-Text, and
Australian Engineering File.
• Essays are to be fully referenced using the Harvard style.
Students should refer to the RMIT library website on
Referencing Resources.
http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=8rwjnkcmfoeez
• The originality verification software Turnitin (see
http://www.turnitin.com) will be used on these assessments.
Any student found to have plagiarised will be subjected to the
RMIT Student Discipline Regulation. Student should also refer
to http://www.rmit.edu.au/academicintegrity for more detail
on avoiding plagiarism. For further clarification on appropriate
referencing, students should consult their tutor.
• Essays should be written succinctly, with a length of about 1500
words per group.
• Students may draw on relevant references listed on the
Learning Hub and in Topic 1 as a starting point.
Question:
Choose one of the following renewable energy technologies: wind
power, biofuels, geothermal power, large-scale solar power.
Drawing on literature debating the merits of this technology,
review the advantages and disadvantages of the technology, and
then discuss how a compromise may be achieved
Tips for this assignment:
The structure of the essay should read something like the following.
(It is suggested that you use headings.)
• Introduction
• Brief overview of the technology
• Advantages of the technology
• Disadvantages of the technology
• How a compromise can be achieved
• Conclusion
Introduction: Not more than around 200 words, including
overview of the focus and scope of the essay.
Advantages, disadvantages and compromise: Discussion should
be based on evidence, clearly referenced in the text using Harvard
style. For example: “Globally installed wind power grew at an
average rate of 30% per year from 2002 to 2008 (International
Energy Agency, 2008)” instead of “There has been a large growth in
wind power in the world lately”. You should consider a wide range
of issues when discussing advantages and disadvantages.
Referencing: Include an alphabetical list of references at the end of when writing about the current state of technologies you should
always use recent references.
the document using Harvard style. All the references in the text
should be in the list. References not mentioned in the text should
NOT be in the list. Wikipedia, How Stuff Works and similar
websites are not valid sources. Use books, articles from journals and
statistical data from recognised international institutions instead.
Renewable energy technologies are constantly improving. Hence