How AI and sources are handled, what mathematics is assumed and when, a teaching-calendar change, and how to get help.

Policies and support#

SLOP1849 is taught in the School of Continuous Improvement.

Use of AI#

Using an AI tool to help build an explanation is permitted. It does not do the marked work for you. An AI-generated explanation can sound complete and still be confidently wrong, or quietly leave something out — finding those omissions, oversimplifications and errors is your job, not the tool’s. Where an initial explanation came from is not what gets marked here. The judgement you show about it is.

Sources#

Cite where a number, a claim, or a dataset came from. If a piece of work uses a real measurement — a spectrum, a dated event, a physical constant — name the source and give enough detail that someone else could find the same figure. Be honest about the difference between an explanation you worked through yourself and one you read or were given. Neither is a problem by itself; presenting one as the other is.

Mathematics#

No formal mathematics is assumed before Week 7. Weeks 1 to 6 work with numbers, estimates, graphs and comparisons, and nothing beyond that. Week 7 is where a question stops being settleable by argument alone, and the course starts expecting calculation instead. From Week 7 onward, show your working — an estimate with no arithmetic behind it is not an answer.

Teaching calendar#

Monday 5 October 2026 is Labour Day in the ACT. The Week 9 lecture does not run that day — it moves to Tuesday 6 October 2026.

Support#

Ask in the session first — that is what sessions are for. See the People page for who teaches the course and how to reach them.

Image credit#

The hero and link-preview images on this site are details from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, credited to NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team, and in the public domain.