Course-wide rules — late work and extensions, your own sleep data, safety in the Nap Labs, academic integrity, and where to go when the course turns up something real.

Policies and support#

The rules that apply across the whole course, so each assessment brief can point here instead of restating them. Two of these are specific to this course and worth reading even if you normally skip a page like this: the one about your own data, and the one about what happens if a Nap Lab turns up something that needs a doctor rather than a tutor.

Your own sleep data#

This course asks you to record a fortnight of your own sleep, alertness and caffeine use, and to hand it in. That is personal health information about you, and it is treated as such.

• Only the marker reads your log. It is not circulated, not used as teaching material, and not kept after marks are finalised unless you say otherwise in writing.
• Pooled lab data is anonymous at the point of collection. Numbers go onto the board without names, and nobody is asked to say aloud which row was theirs.
• You may withhold context. The Nap Log asks for a line about each day’s circumstances. If a day’s explanation is something you would rather not write down, write “not recorded”. It costs you nothing: the analysis is graded on what you do with the data you have, and a gap you have declared is not a gap in the record.
• You can ask for an alternative. If recording and submitting this material is not something you want to do at all, contact the convenor in the first two weeks and an alternative assessment of equivalent weight will be arranged. You do not have to give a reason.

Safety in the Nap Labs#

• You are never required to sleep. Lying quietly with your eyes shut produces a usable data point and an interesting one. Roughly a third of the room cannot nap on demand in a room full of strangers, which is itself a finding the course takes seriously.
• Every condition has an alternative. Deferring a meal, taking caffeine, napping in a shared space — if any of these is a problem for you, tell the lab tutor beforehand. No explanation is required, there is no penalty, and the alternative conditions are genuinely useful as controls rather than a consolation prize.
• Do not drive straight out of a long nap. Sleep inertia is the subject of week 2 and it is real for fifteen to thirty minutes. Wait it out, and use the time to take your fifteen-minute measurement.
• Do not sleep-deprive yourself for the course. It will not improve your data, it contaminates the point you were trying to make, and no part of the assessment rewards it.

If the course turns up something real#

Measuring your own sleep for a fortnight occasionally reveals something that is not a coursework matter: persistent unrefreshing sleep, loud snoring with daytime sleepiness, falling asleep without warning, or distress that the log is making worse rather than clearer.

The teaching team cannot diagnose you and will not try. What we will do is say plainly that something is worth a GP appointment, and help you get an extension so that the assessment is not the reason you delay it. Sleep apnoea and narcolepsy are both underdiagnosed, and a student course is a poor place to find out — but it is a place people do find out, and pretending otherwise would be irresponsible.

Late work and extensions#

• Extensions are arranged before the due date wherever possible. Ask early; an extension requested in advance is a short conversation, and one requested afterwards is a form.
• Work submitted late without an extension loses 5% of the available marks per working day, to a maximum of five days, after which it is not marked.
• The Nap Log’s recording period cannot be extended backwards. The fortnight is the fortnight. If illness or circumstance wrecks part of it, tell us during it rather than writing an analysis of data you know is broken — we can move the window, and we cannot reconstruct it afterwards.

Academic integrity#

The university’s rules apply in full. Three points where this course is specific:

• Cite what you read, not what you found cited. The Cultural Case Study is the assessment where this matters most. If you are relying on a study you have only met through a summary, say so in the text. A citation to something you have not read is a fabrication even when the source exists.
• Your data is yours. Do not share Nap Log entries between students, and do not submit numbers you did not record. A fortnight of invented data is detectable and it is the version of this offence the course sees most.
• Declare assistance, including generative tools. Using one is not prohibited. Presenting its output as your own reading, your own analysis or your own data is. Say what you used and what for.

Access and inclusion#

If you have an access plan, send it to the convenor early and we will arrange the lab conditions around it rather than after it. Several sessions involve lying down, dimmed lighting, timed tasks and working in pairs, and every one of those has a workable alternative — but they are much easier to arrange a week ahead than on the day.

Shift workers and carers: this course is, of all things, badly placed to be inflexible about sleep schedules. Consultation times are movable and several labs can be completed on your own schedule with the tutor’s instructions.

Getting help#

Start with the teaching team — the page says who to ask about what. For anything beyond the course, the university’s counselling, health and disability services are the right destination, and the teaching team will help you reach them if you would rather not do it alone.