ENGS-171: Industrial Ecology

Every week of the course, students will be given a number of documents (articles, book chapters, etc.) which they are to read and critique in writing, as follows:

1. Title, author(s), source, year (1 or 2 lines)
2. Brief summary (3 to 8 lines)
3. Source of information (1 line) (whether contents are new data, new analysis of existing data, author’s personal opinion, ...)
4. Targeted readership, and possibly reason for this choice (1 line)
5. Conclusions derived from the information (5 to 10 lines) (findings, points made, distinction between certainty and likelihood, recommendations, ...)
6. Student’s own opinion (5 to 10 lines) (student’s reaction, disagreement with or reinforcement of a point made by the author, comparison with other documents or personal experience, extrapolation into future, …).

Grading of critiques will be performed as follows:

    0 point - Critique not done or greatly deficient
    1 point - Deficient critique (mixing between summary and conclusions; vague or ill-argued opinion, elements of personal opinion placed in conclusions, ...)
    2 points - Critique meeting expectations
    3 points - Critique exceeding expectations (precise yet succinct summary and conclusions, unusually thoughtful opinion, …)