The course-wide rules for late work, extensions, academic integrity and getting help.

Policies and support#

Extensions#

Field work runs on real weeks with real people in them: illness, care responsibilities and shift work all get in the way of a scheduled observation. Email your convenor before the due date with what happened and how much time you need; a short, late extension request is fine, a long explanation is not required. Extensions are not available once an assessment has been marked and returned.

Academic integrity, applied to this course#

Diagnosis, protocol and redesign work must describe spaces and interactions you actually observed. You may discuss your observations with classmates (comparing notes on how a shared kitchen behaves is part of the method), but the write-up, the protocol and the redesign must be your own account and your own design. Fabricating an observation is treated the same as fabricating data anywhere else: as a breach, not a shortcut.

A note on privacy#

You will be writing about real rooms and real people who did not sign up to be studied. Describe behaviour, not identities: no names, no photographs, no details that would let a classmate or a marker identify a specific person you observed without their knowledge. If in doubt, generalise the detail until it is no longer traceable to one person.

Getting help#

If something about a week’s task is unclear, ask before the due date rather than guessing: a five-minute clarifying email is always cheaper than a redone field observation. If you are finding the personal or emotional content of a week difficult rather than merely unclear, say so; the course covers real friction between real people, and it is fine to ask for a different observation site if the assigned one is not workable for you.