Student Handbook and Essay Writing Guide

VIDEO ARCHIVE: BORROWING POLICY FOR STUDENTS

1. All archive materials are for research and course use only. Materials are not available for personal entertainment or for use by students in non-FILM/PCUL/COMM/DART/VISA courses. CPCF students will have priority when the viewing rooms are heavily booked.

2. Archive materials may be viewed only in the CPCF viewing rooms. Viewing room access is normally available only to students in 200-level courses and above in preparation for seminar and essay assignments. Students must indicate on the booking form the course for which items are required.

3. Students may not view videos instead of attending the regular lab screenings in their courses. In exceptional circumstances, a student may be given permission to make up a missed screening. Such permission must be in writing and presented to the Coordinator at the time of the booking.

4. Students must determine the number of the required item by consulting the CPCF database. The database may be searched in the Coordinator's office (AN 309) during posted office hours.

5. Viewing rooms and videos must be booked on the appropriate form 24 hours in advance and in person (between 8:30 am and 4:00 pm). The Coordinator will not look up tape numbers or book rooms over the telephone. Last minute requests cannot be accommodated.

6. A viewing room may be reserved for no more that two hours between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, Monday to Friday. Room keys and tapes may be picked up from the coordinator during office hours. Keys must be signed for by the student booking the room. Tapes and keys should be returned immediately after use.

7. Students may make evening and weekend bookings with the prior permission of the Coordinator. During the lunch hour, after 4:00 pm, and on weekends, special arrangements will be require for collecting room keys and tapes. Weekend bookings must be made by the preceding Thursday at 4:00 pm.

8. In the event that the Coordinator's office is closed when students are returning items, the tape and the key should be dropped in the box outside the Coordinator's office door.

9. Under no circumstances may videos be taken beyond CPCF viewing rooms or course seminar rooms. Personal or home use of tapes will result in loss of borrowing privileges.

10. Failure to use tapes or viewing rooms when booked denies other students access to these scarce resources. The Coordinator should be given 24-hour notice of cancellation of bookings. Missed viewing room bookings, frequent cancellations, or failure to return keys and tapes promptly will result in loss of borrowing privileges.

11. It is the student's responsibility to take proper care of archive materials and viewing equipment. Videos should be rewound or cued and returned to their containers. Users may be charged for damage caused by negligence or loss.

12. Failure to abide by these rules or use of the archive and viewing rooms for illegitimate purposes will result in loss of borrowing privileges.

1. The Department video cameras and editing equipment are for the use of students in production courses homed in CPCF. Other use of this equipment is restricted to CPCF courses and Spring Festival subject to the approval of the Chair.

2. Before a student can have access to either cameras or editing facilities, he/she must take an instruction workshop which will be offered when demand warrants, or at the beginning of each term. For those already familiar with the equipment operation, approval is still necessary. Either the supervising faculty or Film Technician can approve such requests.

3. All users are required to have a card on file with the Film Technician indicating for which equipment the student is approved.

4. Program or Department need will occasionally override all others, when no alternative equipment is available as may be the case when a lecture, performance or workshop needs to be videotaped.

5. The cameras and accessories will be booked and signed out during the regular academic year by the Film Technician and returned to him/her. Bookings, pickups and drop-offs may be made during the Film Technician's office hours or at a mutually agreed upon time.

6. . All equipment malfunctions must be reported immediately to the Film Technician.

7. The editing equipment is available only during the hours specified by the Department. Editing time must be booked through the Film Technician. Time restrictions on the editing equipment will be applied, if necessary, when the facilities are under heavy use. Consideration of others' needs must be taken into account when booking. Advance bookings are strongly recommended.

8. Keys to the editing suite must be picked up during the Film Technician's office hours prior to the booking or at a mutually agreed upon time. When edit booking is complete the key is to be locked in the edit suite unless otherwise specified.

9. Students must normally notify the Film Technician 24 hours in advance if they are unable to pick up or return the equipment or use editing time as previously booked.

10. Failure to abide by any of these guidelines may result in a suspension of borrowing privileges. In some cases students who fail to respect these procedures may be subject to grade deductions.

ESSAY STYLE GUIDELINES

Expectations governing written assignments

Style guidelines for written assignments

General Presentation

Reference conventions

Notes on Writing

Notes on Proofreading

Citation guidelines

Scholarly writing can be a form of personal expression that draws upon one's own imagination and experiences as much as it does upon careful analysis and research. That said, a writer must acknowledge the contributions made by previous scholars, if only to note how his or her work builds upon and/or differs from them. In this respect, citations are crucial. It is through citations that a writer indicates the source of every fact, idea, or argument that he or she has drawn from other scholars.

The standard citation style for the department is parenthetical notation, and this system should be used unless you are otherwise instructed by your professor. Parenthetical notation asks you to place a short citation in parentheses – (like these) – at the end of each passage containing material drawn from other authors. This short citation should then refer your reader to a "Works Cited" page, where you will provide a full bibliographic reference for every source cited in the body of your text. This "Works Cited" page should appear at the end of your paper.

The department's use of parenthetical notation is based upon the format developed by the Modern Language Association. The following sections offer a very general description of when and how to use it. For a more detailed discussion, please consult the most recent editions of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers or the Chicago Manual of Style.

 

When to use citations

A citation must be provided in each of the following situations:

1. following any direct quotation taken from a source.

2. when repeating any idea or argument taken from a source, even if that idea or

   argument has been paraphrased in your own words.

3. when repeating any obscure facts taken from a source – for example, statistics or potentially controversial statements.

Failure to cite sources when using this kind of information constitutes a form of plagiarism and will be dealt with under university guidelines. Further information on this subject may be found in this handbook in the section on Academic Misconduct.

 

The Quotation

Quotations are often used in scholarly writing. They are used best when a researcher cannot find the words to express another author's ideas any better than the original author. This may occur where the original author has crafted a particularly apt turn of phrase, or where a certain precision is required – as occurs with technical definitions. If neither of these situations holds – if you can express the idea of the original author faithfully in your own words – then you should do so, and not use the direct quotation.

Points to keep in mind when using quotations:

1. Brief quotations should appear in double quotation marks (").

2. Long quotations (let's say, as a rough guide, those of 35 words or more) should be indented from the normal margins of your page, and appear without quotation marks.

3. Quotations that appear within quotations should appear in single quotation marks (').

   For example:

   Unfortunately, Dicks's dialogue in the novelization is limited by the quality of the original teleplay. Consider the following rivetting exchange: "The Black Dalek's voice was triumphant. 'The Daleks have discovered the secret of time travel. We have changed the pattern of Earth's history.' Defiantly, the Doctor said, 'You won't succeed, you know. In the end you will always be defeated'" (1979: 104).

4. A parenthetical note should appear after the closing quotation marks, and before the final punctuation mark. For an example, see above.

5. All quotations should make sense within the flow of your own writing. In this regard, all pronouns and verb tenses in a quotation should be consistent with the sentences that surround it.

6. Any changes you make to a quoted passage must be noted immediately. If you drop any words, this must be indicated with an ellipse (that is, three periods), as such: ... If you change any words, the new words must appear in square brackets: [ ].

   For example, take the following passage:

   Again and again, we were collecting the same story about poor, usually rural backgrounds, about very hard exploitation and training during apprenticeship; about moving from village to town, from town to city, and city to Paris (of course this last feature was to be expected) (Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame, 1981:187).

   It could be rendered as follows if quoted by another author:

   Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame write that, "Again and again, [they] were collecting the same story about poor, usually rural backgrounds, about very hard exploitation ... during apprenticeship; about moving from village to town, from town to city, and city to Paris ..." (1981: 187).

7. A quotation should be introduced into the flow of your own ideas with reference to its original author and/or context. It should never stand on its own. For example, the following construction should be avoided:

   John Milton believed that an author's work captured the essence of the author's soul. "They preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them" (Milton, 1644: 5).

   Instead, the following construction would be more informative:

   John Milton believed that an author's work captured the essence of the author's soul. Writing in defence of a free press, he argued that books "preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them" (Milton, 1644: 5).

 

Parenthetical Notation in the Text

The intention of any citation style is to provide clear and precise directions to the sources used. Consistency is the key. A standard note should always include the author's name and the year that his or her work appeared. Note that "the author" may be an individual writer (or group of writers) or a corporate entity, such as a major corporation. A simple note might appear as follows:

(Hall, 1995)

(CRTC, 1997)

If the author is mentioned by name in the text of your sentence, then the citation may be shortened to just the year:

Hall (1995) has argued that ....

In a recent decision, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (1997) suggested ....

Where more than one author is responsible for a source, the citation may be shortened by substituting the words "et al." for the second and subsequent names:

(Leiss, Kline, and Jhally, 1986)

(Leiss et al., 1986)

When two or more sources are cited to support the same point, they should appear in the same parenthetical note separated by a semi-colon:

(Hall, 1995; Leiss et al., 1986)

If the author's name is not known, then the title of the source should be used instead:

("CRTC has new plan," 1998)

When specific facts, ideas, or quotations have been taken from a text, its citation should also include the relevant page number:

(Hall, 1995: 261)

("CRTC has new plan," 1998: B3)

When a passage taken from a source is itself a quotation taken from a previous document, then the original author should be given credit as follows:

James Carey has advanced Raymond Williams's ideas with approval. Carey agrees with Williams that, "the study of communications was deeply and disastrously deformed by being confidently named the study of 'mass-communication'" (Williams, quoted in Carey, 1988: 40).

Where two sources can be confused, additional information must be supplied to ensure clarity. For example, if the same author produced two works in the same year, letters may be used to flag the difference; these letters must also be used in the "Works Cited" page:

(Hall, 1995a)

(Hall, 1995b: 261)

A piece in a continuing series – such as a newspaper column or a website feature – may be distinguished with reference to its specific date of appearance:

("Recommended Reading," 26 June 2000)

("Recommended Reading," 10 July 2000)

Another alternative appears in the sample passages at the end of this section of the handbook.

Parenthetical notes for broadcast programs should follow this format:

(title of program or series, "title of individual episode," date of transmission)

Precision is desirable with dates of transmission, particularly with event programming. For example:

(Seeing Things, "Seeing the Country," 1985)

(The 88^th Grey Cup Game, 26 November 2000)

If the name of the series or show appears in the sentence preceding the note, then the note can be abbreviated.

"Seeing the Country" ..... (Seeing Things, 1985).

The 88^th Grey Cup Game (26 November 2000) ....

Parenthetical notes for films should follow these three guidelines:

1. they should be used only following the first reference to any film.

2. they should immediately follow the title of the film, rather than appear at the end

   of the sentence.

3. they should include the director's full name; the country of production or the production company; and the year of production.

Following these guidelines, either one of the following examples would be acceptable:

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, Ego Films, 1994)

Exotica (Atom Egoyan, Canada, 1994).

Note: any questions concerning the method to be used when citing films should be referred to your course instructor.

Note: a website address, or URL, should never appear in a parenthetical note. It should appear, however, with the full reference you provide in your "Works Cited" page.

 

The Works Cited Page

A good "Works Cited" page will provide your reader with enough information to identify and retrieve the sources you have used. In general, this means that you should provide all of the basic bibliographic data relevant to each source. One should also note the following:

• the "Works Cited" page should start at the top of a fresh page.

• each item listed should appear in alphabetical order.

• each item should appear with "hanging indentation" – that is, the first line should begin at the left margin, while the second and subsequent lines should be indented – just like the entries in this list.

• the page margins, font, and line spacings should be consistent with those used

  in the text of your paper.

For published sources, bibliographic data should appear in the following basic formats:

Book by one author:

Verzuh, Ron. (1988). Radical Rag: The Pioneer Labour Press in Canada. Toronto: Steel Rail Press.

Verzuh, Ron. (1988). Radical Rag: The Pioneer Labour Press in Canada. Toronto: Steel Rail Press.

Note: titles should be underlined or appear in italics, but never both. All examples following this one will appear in italics only.

Book with two editors:

Beale, Alison, and Annette Van Den Bosch, eds. (1998). Ghosts in the Machine: Women and Cultural Policy in Canada and Australia. Toronto: Garamond.

Book with editor, translator, or compiler distinct from author:

Habermas, Jόrgen. (1979).Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.

Article in book:

Mazloff, Debra C. (1997). "Disciplining a Teammate: Control in Self-Managing Teams." In Beverly D. Sypher, ed.Case Studies in Organizational Communication, 2^nd ed. New York: Guilford. 110-128.

Article in periodical:

Schultz, Tanjev. (2000). "Mass media and the concept of interactivity." Media, Culture, and Society, 22. 205-221.

Article where author's name is unknown:

"Web distributor gets longer sentence." (15 July 2000). Globe and Mail. A6.

"The Rankings." (26 June 2000). Marketing. 23-32.

Two or more sources by the same author:

Williams, Raymond. (1974). Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana.

-----. (1977). Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press.

-----. (1980). 'Advertising: The Magic System.' In Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso. 327-335.

Note: if you have several titles by the same author, his or her entries should appear in chronological order rather than alphabetical order.

References to unpublished texts or interviews should provide as much information as is available, within the standard format. For example:

Lorenz, Stacy L. (2000). "Media, Culture, and Community: Canadians in a World of

Sport, 1870-1939." Paper presented to the Canadian Historical Association. Edmonton, Alberta.

Asper, Israel. (19 May 1991). President, CanWest Communications. Winnipeg: personal interview.

Computer-mediated communications have created their own set of challenges for the disciplined researcher. Some documents are created especially for distribution electronically, while others exist in hard copy but have been reproduced electronically. For sources that only exist in electronic formats, the following format should apply:

Name of author or organization responsible for document.

(Date that the specific document first appeared).

"Title of document." [if needed]

Title of website, database, or subscription service.

Number of the edition or version used [if relevant].

Date that source was accessed by you

<URL>.

If the name of the author is not known, then the title of the work should be used instead.

Examples:

Collins, Ross F. (2000). "Cowboys and Cow Town: Newspapers in the Dakota Territory." Media History Monographs, 3 Website. Accessed 13 February 2000 <www.scripps.ohiou.edu/mediahistory/mhv3in.html>.

"Academic Programs and Regulations." (2000). Brock University website. Accessed 17 July 2000 <www.brocku.ca/webcal/undergrad/regulations.html>.

Sources that exist in hard copy but which have been accessed through a computer should be cited exactly as if the hard copy had been used, but with the following addition:

Title of website, database, or subscription service.

Date that source was accessed by you

<URL>.

For example, a periodical article culled from a database would be listed as follows:

Barnesley, Paul. (October 1999). "APTN launch a qualified success." Windspeaker, 17. 10. CBCA Fulltext Reference 1999 database. Accessed 19 July 2000 <brain.biblio.brocku.ca/screens/edtitle.html>.

For sound recordings on vinyl, tape, or disc, the citation format should be:

Performer (may be either an individual or a group).

"Title of piece or song." [if relevant]

Title of album. [if relevant]

Production company and catalogue number of recording, year.

Example of a song packaged as a single:

Hendricks, Jon. "A Good Git-Together." (World Pacific 1283, 1959).

Example of a piece taken from an album:

Chemical Brothers. "The Sunshine Underground."Q – The best tracks from the best albums of 1999. (Q Magazine QMAGDEC 99-04, 1999).

Note: With electronic storage formats such as MPEG, individual performances are often divorced from their original context – that is, the full recording or album as released by the original performer. When recordings are acquired electronically by a researcher, production credits should always be traced back to the original context. For example, if you reference a song that you have downloaded from the internet, then you should track down its original source – the album on which it first appeared. If the song only exists in an electronic form, then you should cite it according to the citation format provided for the internet (see below). This would be necessary where some pop bands have used websites to post MPEGs of songs which have never appeared in hard copy – songs such as studio out-takes and live recordings.

A song downloaded from the internet would be listed as follows:

Hendricks, Jon. "A Good Git-Together." (World Pacific 1283, 1959). Napster.Com website. Accessed 14 February 2000 <www.napster.com>.

For broadcast programs on radio or television, the citation format should be:

Title of program or series: "Title of individual episode." [if relevant]

(Broadcaster, Date of transmission).

Country of production: Production company.

Example:

Iron Chef: "Octopus Battle." (The Food Network Canada, 2000). Japan: Fuji International

Television.

Seeing Things: "Seeing the Country." (CBC, 1985). Canada: CBC.

For films, the citation format should modified as follows:

Title of film..

(Name of director, year of production).

Country of production: production company.

Examples:

Grosse Pointe Blank. (George Armitage, 1997). United States: Hollywood Pictures.

Exotica. (Atom Egoyan, 1994). Canada: Ego Films.

Films need not be included in the list of "Works Cited" unless the assignment requires you to provide more information than you can include in the text of the essay (see Citation guidelines above). If in doubt, ask your instructor.

 

Sample Passages with Works Cited

On the following page, there are two passages which offer examples of several different citation situations. The authors have cited a variety of sources, including unpublished conference papers, journal articles, books, and television advertisements. They have paraphrased the ideas contained in these sources and taken direct quotations.

It is worth noting the coding system the authors developed for the television advertisements. The authors examined almost 70 spots produced by five political parties, all during the same year. There were nine ads for the New Democratic Party alone. This would have rendered standard parenthetical notation somewhat awkward, since there would have been nine ads that could have been referred to as: (NDP, 1993).

In order to clarify their parenthetical notes, they used each advertisement's title rather than its sponsor's name. Then, to replace the date, they assigned each ad a number that included the party's initials and an "E" or an "F" – to indicate whether it was shot in English or French. Hence, the authors could identify each ad by its title, sponsor, number in the series, and production language.

The two passages are taken from:

Romanow, Walter I., et al. (1999). Television Advertising in Canadian Elections: The Attack Mode, 1993. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 33, 118.

Sample

[His] performance was portrayed as less than brilliant. These ads included two featuring photos that focussed on Chrιtien's facial paralysis, along with a series of critical voice-overs, the most damaging being "Jean Chrιtien – a prime minister?" ("Is this a prime minister?" PC23E) and "I personally would be very embarrassed if he were to become the prime minister of Canada" ("I'd be embarrassed," PC22E). ... These two ads had clearly overstepped the line of perceived fair play in Canadian politics, which historically has been more civil than that in the United States (Romanow et al., 1991). Progressive Conservative candidates and campaign workers had not been briefed on these ads and were ill prepared to deal with the storm of criticism that followed their entry into the campaign fray (White interview) ....

Taras, one of the few Canadian researchers to investigate the phenomenon, sees negative advertising as an attempt "to tarnish an opponent through ridicule or by a straight forward savaging of their character or record in office. The competence, motives, intelligence, and integrity of opponents ... [are] brought into question. The object is to draw blood, to inflict irreparable damage (at least for the duration of the campaign)" (1990: 219). Although some researchers have restricted the negative genre to ads that attack the candidate personally (Pfau and Burgoon, 1989: 53; Basham, 1994), research has demonstrated that in negative advertising issues and candidates as targets tend to be mixed and that direct attacks on a candidate's character alone are rare (Roddy and Garramone, 1988; Louden, 1990; Kaid and Johnston, 1991).

Works Cited

Basham, Patrick. (1994). "Going Negative in the Nineties: Still a Good Idea?" Paper presented at Canadian Political Science Association, Annual Meeting. Calgary, Alberta.

"Is this a prime minister?" (CBC, PC23E). Canada: Progressive Conservative Party.

"I would be embarrassed." (CBC, PC22E). Canada: Progressive Conservative Party.

Kaid, Lynda Lee, and Anne Johnston. (1991). "Negative versus Positive Television Advertising in U.S. Presidential Campaigns, 1960-1988."Journal of Communication, 41. 53-64.

Louden, Allan. (1990). "Transformation of Issues to Image and Presence." Paper presented at the International Communications Association Conference. Dublin, Ireland.

Pfau, Michael, and Michael Burgoon. (1989). "The Efficacy of Issue and Character Attack Message Strategies."Communication Reports, 2. 53-61.

Roddy, Brian, and Garramone, Gina. (1988). "Appeals and Strategies of Negative Political Advertising."Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 32. 415-427.

Romanow, Walter, Walter Soderlund, and Richard Price. (1991). "Negative Political Advertising." In Janet Hiebert, ed. Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing Research Studies: Vol.12 – Political Ethics: A Canadian Perspective. Toronto: Dundurn Press. 165-193.

Taras, David. (1990). The Newsmakers: The Media's Influence on Canadian Politics.

Scarborough, Ontario: Nelson Canada.

White, Jodi. (6 May 1994). Progressive Conservative Party member. Ottawa: Personal interview.

 

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Academic misconduct

The following regulations are taken from the Brock University regulations for academic programs, and are also available on the Brock University website, as of July 2000 at //www.brocku.ca/webcal/undergrad/regulations.htm.

Academic Misconduct

1. Definitions

Academic misconduct may take many forms and is not limited to the following:

Exams and Tests

1. Impersonation of a candidate in an exam or test.

2. Copying from another student, or making information available to other students knowing that this is to be submitted as the borrower's own work.

3. Use of unauthorized material.

4. Submission of a take-home examination written by someone else.

Laboratories

1. Copying a laboratory report, or allowing someone else to copy one's report.

2. Using another student's data unless specifically allowed by the instructor.

3. Allowing someone else to do the laboratory work.

4. Using direct quotations or large sections of paraphrased material in a lab report without acknowledgment.

5. Faking laboratory data.
   /

Essays and Assignments

1. Submission of an essay written in whole or in part by someone else as one's own.

2. Preparing an essay or assignment for submission by another student.

3. . Copying an essay or assignment, or allowing one's essay or assignment to be copied by someone else.

4. Using direct quotations or large sections of paraphrased material without

   acknowledgment.

5. The buying or selling of term papers or assignments.

6. The submission of the same piece of work in more than one course without the permission of the instructors.

7. Submitting whole or part of a computer program with or without minor modifications as one's own.

Individual instructors or Departments will point out areas of specific concern not covered above. Students should be encouraged to consult instructors in case of doubt.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means presenting work done (in whole or in part) by someone else as if it were one's own. Associate dishonest practices include faking or falsification of data, cheating or the uttering of false statements by a student in order to obtain unjustified concessions.

Plagiarism should be distinguished from cooperation and collaboration. Often, students may be permitted or expected to work on assignments collectively, and to present the results either collectively or separately. This is not a problem so long as it is clearly understood whose work is being presented, for example, by way of formal acknowledgment or by footnoting. Instructors should inform students what constitutes acceptable workmanship, proper form of citation and use of sources.

2. Procedures

Students shall not be penalized for suspected academic misconduct. It is the responsibility of the instructor to demonstrate the accuracy of the charge.

If the instructor can document a case of academic misconduct, the instructor shall inform the Department Chair and the Office of the Registrar; the latter will not process any application for withdrawal from the course pending the outcome of the investigation of the case. If a charge of academic misconduct is subsequently brought by the instructor, no withdrawal from a course shall be considered valid.

The instructor and the Chair together will interview the student, inform the student that he/she is being charged with academic misconduct and attempt to discover whether there are any extenuating circumstances. If upheld by the Chair, the case will then be referred to the appropriate Dean along with any necessary observations and/or recommendations from the Department. The student may, if wished, be accompanied to any interviews by one of the departmental student representatives or faculty, staff or student member of Brock such as, but not limited to, a representative from the Student Development Centre or the Student Ombudsman.

If the Dean is satisfied that a case of academic misconduct has been proven, he/she should inform the Office of the Registrar who, in the case of first offenders, will insert a permanent note in the student's file. The Office of the Registrar will inform the student in writing, of the action taken and outline the possible penalties for future infractions. The Office of the Registrar will note the transgression on the student's transcript in the case of second offenders. The notation will be removed from the transcript when the student graduates or three years after the last registration.

3. Penalties

A Dean who is satisfied that academic misconduct has occurred may impose the following sanctions:

• oral or written disciplinary warning or reprimand

• lower grade or failure on the assignment or examination

• failure in the course

• suspension from the University for a definite period

• notation on student's official transcript

• withholding or rescinding a Brock degree or certificate