The course-wide rules for extensions, late work, academic integrity, use of accident material, and getting help.
Course-wide rules, so that an assessment brief can link to one place. Where a rule here differs from a rule on an assessment page, the assessment page wins and you should tell us, because that means we have contradicted ourselves.
Extensions#
Ask before the deadline and you will get one. No documentation, no explanation, no form. Email the convenor and name a new date.
This is deliberate and it is worth saying why. A policy that requires you to document a reason spends your worst week making you prove you are having one, and it hands the best outcomes to whoever is most practised at asking. The cost of the open version is that a few people take more time than they needed. That is a much smaller cost.
Asking after the deadline is a different conversation, and still usually fine — see below.
Late work#
Without an extension: five percentage points of the component per working day, to a floor of the pass mark for that component, for the first week. After a week, talk to us rather than submitting into a void.
The floor exists so that a late submission is always worth making. A penalty that can take a piece of work below the point of having done it teaches students to abandon rather than to finish, which is the opposite of what we want.
The live frequency check cannot be late in the same way, because it is a booked slot. Rebooking before your slot is free and needs no reason.
Academic integrity#
The ANU Academic Integrity Rule applies, and the university’s policy is the authority. What follows is what it means for the specific things this course asks for.
The transcript must be your own listening. The whole skill being assessed is what you can hear. Comparing transcripts with someone who has a different allocated exchange is fine; comparing with someone who has yours is not.
The audit’s evidence must be your own. Two students may take the same domain and will be marked separately. You may not share observations, transcripts or interview notes. Cite anything published.
Tools. Automatic speech recognition, translation and language models are all allowed, and several are genuinely useful. Two conditions: say what you used and where, and understand that you are answerable for the output. An ASR system that silently normalises thirteen thousand to one three thousand has destroyed your finding, and “the tool did it” is not a defence because checking it was the assessed work.
When in doubt, declare it. A declared borderline thing has never cost anybody marks in this course. An undeclared one is a different matter.
Accident and incident material#
This course is built on recordings and reports involving real people, many of whom died. Three rules, and they are not negotiable:
- Write about the transmission and the system that produced it, not about the character of the person transmitting. This is the Annex 13 posture and week 11 explains the reasoning: prevention, not attribution.
- Do not name individuals where your source does not, and do not go looking for names your source withheld.
- Training samples stay in the room. The rating samples in week 8 are real voices attached to real licences, used with permission. Do not copy, share or re-post them.
If material in a session is difficult for you, you may leave without explaining, and nothing in this course is assessed on attendance. Telling a teacher beforehand means we can warn you what is coming; not telling us is also fine.
Ethics, for the audit#
The phraseology audit may involve observing people at work. If it does:
- They must know you are there and why, and agree to it.
- Do not record without explicit consent.
- Do not transcribe patient information, personal data, or anything commercially confidential.
- If your domain would require a formal ethics application, it is the wrong domain for a twelve-week course. Use published transcripts instead.
Clear your domain in week 9. The most common reason a domain is rejected is that it cannot be observed ethically, and that is much easier to fix in week 9 than in week 11.
Accessibility and adjustments#
If you have an Access and Inclusion plan, send it to the convenor and we will apply it. You do not need to explain it.
Two adjustments come up often enough in a course about listening that they are worth stating in advance:
- Hearing. The drills can be run at any level, with transcripts supplied alongside audio, and the degradation exercise in week 9 can be done on paper. Nothing in the course requires a particular standard of hearing, and no assessment measures one.
- Speaking. The frequency check can be done in writing or through an intermediary. It assesses whether you understand a clearance and whether you make your uncertainty visible, and neither of those requires speech.
Ask early if you can, but asking late is better than not asking.
Getting help#
Consultation is Wednesdays after the lecture, no appointment, for as long as anybody is still there. Questions about a specific week are best asked in that week’s sim session, where the answer is useful to the whole room.
The people page has who to ask about what, and each entry says what that person is actually the right person for.
If something has gone wrong and you do not know who to tell, tell the convenor. If the convenor is the problem, the School of Language and Safety has a director of education, and saying so here is the point of a policies page.