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ECOS3002: Development Economics
Assignment Description: Development Economics Group Essay
Assignment Overview
You will work in groups of 51 students to complete a group essay project on a topic relevant to
development economics.2 Each student will be responsible for one section of the essay. 75% of your
mark will come from the mark for your own section, and 25% of the mark will come from the mark
for the rest of the essay (so the uniform average of your group members’ marks). Hence the essay is
mostly about your own performance, but there is still a significant incentive to work together to
produce the best possible joint product.
Students have the option to choose (1) which of the 2 essay formats they prefer (research proposal,
policy report for private sector partner, or policy report for public sector partner), (2) essay topic, and
(3) who they would like to partner with.
The project will proceed in 2 phases: (1) a 500-word synopsis, due in week 9, and (2) a final essay,
due in week 12 (Friday 27 October).
Group and Format Selection
You must participate in the group selection process or you will not be matched with a group and
automatically receive a score of 0.
Group selection
Group selection will occur in weeks 7-8. This will run through Canvas under the People tab. Students
will be able to self-select into groups of up to 5 (so if you have students you’d like to work with, but
only have yourself (1), 2, 3, or 4 people, please sign up for the same group number and additional
group member(s) will be added later).
After a fixed period of time that will be announced later (probably a few days), the instructor will use
random assignment to allocate all of the remaining students to groups, who have allocated
themselves to one of the groups under the People tab.
Format selection
A group is allowed to change their essay format and topic along the way; you must just communicate
this to me (see guidance on Communication later in this document).
It will always be up to the group to decide who will be responsible for each section of the essay.
1 Since enrolments are unlikely to divide evenly by 5, it is likely that there will be a couple groups with less than 5
members. In those cases the modified assessment will be as fair as possible to all involved.