QUESTION: President George Washington responded to criticism when he said, “The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.” Why would America and its government have been called “the last great experiment”? In using content from throughout this course, articulate and explain President Washington’s words. Do you agree with President Washington?
Directions: Please construct an essay response (complete with an introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs) of 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 1000 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.
