Question:
Explain how and why origins of government outside of what became the United States had significant changes upon early American attitudes toward the expectations and responsibilities of government. For example, how did the colonial British government and ideas of absolute monarchies lay the foundation for an American government with checked powers (i.e. separation of power and checks and balances) and federalism?
Directions:
Please construct an essay response (complete with an introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs) of 800-1000 total words for this question. Provide several examples and an explanation derived from course content to support your answer. Your answers should be complete and comprehensive. What do these selected examples show us? You will be graded for the completeness and comprehensiveness of your response and use of examples.
Students can exceed the 1000 words minimum without grade deduction, however, students will receive a grade deduction for writing less than 800 total minimum words for their exam. The word count is the body of the text excluding a cover page (if you decide to include one), header, footnotes, and attached bibliography (if you decide to include one). Since footnotes contain all citation information, an attached bibliography is not necessary.
Students often lose points for not explaining the importance of their selected examples. Students should not simply list a series of examples. Students should instead provide analysis and explanation upon their selected examples to illustrate their understanding of the significance and importance of that selected example. Why was that example chosen to support your exam response? How does your selected example support your argument? Be specific, clear, and concise.
Students will be evaluated on their understanding and comprehension of the course material as provided and presented by the instructor. Exams should demonstrate a mastery of course content as provided in the instructor lectures and supplemented by the course textbook.
You are not expected to locate external sources for your responses. Feel free to treat this as an open book/open note exam. Feel free to use anything and everything posted to Canvas.
As indicated in the syllabus, students should be citing any and all sources used on all course assignments. This is a general rule when submitting work in college. Sources need reference and citation when they are used. If your work summarizes, directly quotes, and/or paraphrases information from any source, it needs a reference. In academic work, sources need to be referenced to credit the original author. If you’re making broad or overall assessments of the content without direct connection to the source, it would not need a citation. If you’re, however, closely following the language, tone, and structure of the text, it needs a citation to credit the original author. I indicate this general rule in the section on plagiarism in the syllabus. I also have a guide posted that provides instructions to insert footnotes (and a sample piece of text to show footnotes inserted) in the Using Footnotes Using Chicago guide available on Canvas.
If students use external sources (i.e. sources not provided by the instructor) for their exams, these sources should follow the criteria as listed in the research guide and research videos. As a reminder, all sources (i.e. sources provided by the instructor, the course textbook, and/or external sources as located by students) need to be cited when paraphrasing, summarizing, and/or directly quoting from its contents.
Students should complete their own original work for each exam for this course. Students should not re-submit sections or pieces of earlier exams for later exams in the course. Since exams will be scanned by SafeAssign, the results will show if the text from exams are similar in structure or language to other student’s exams (either students at this institution or other institutions), similar in structure and language to external sources, and/or similar in structure and language to course content as provided by the instructor.
Responses are to be submitted to the dropbox on Canvas by the due date. No late work will be accepted. No work will be accepted via email. Ensure your attachments are Word documents or PDFs. Students should NOT use Pages or GoogleDocs formats for their work. You may also put the text of your exam into the textbox. Students should submit all of their exam responses to Canvas in the above specified, readable formats (i.e Word Document or PDF document). Only those exams submitted in readable formats, able to be opened by the instructor for grading, and submitted on time (i.e. by the specified due date and time) will be eligible for grading.
