Three separate written forum entries will each constitutes ten marks - three forums makeup 30 marks and therefore 30% of your unit assessment overall.

The idea behind the forums is peer learning. The forums start with your submission of a short opinion of between 250 and 350 words submitted about 1 week before the assessment deadline. Your opinion is drawn from the learning material. The three questions are:

• Forum 1 – “The Australian economy and environment are not linked”.
• Forum 2 – “The term Cleaner Production just means companies have to recycle waste”.
• Forum 3 – “The best time to engage the public in an EIA is after all the environmental issues have been identified”.

The forum then requires a second actions from you by the due date: to make a short, respectful and reflective reply to two of your colleague's posts.

The Moodle site for EVST19008 contains a document detailing the marking criteria for the three forum assessments – in general, the marking accounts for:

• a structured and engagingly written opinion drawing on unit materials;
• within the word limits - between 250 and 350 words;
• learned opinion on more than one related concept;
• grammar and spelling;
• submission of the original post five days before the deadline; and
• commentary on other student posts before the deadline.

The three assessable quizzes consist of multiple choice or true/false type questions. The questions for the assessable quizzes are selected from the prescribed text as follows:

• Quiz 1 - Chapters 3 and 4;
• Quiz 2 - Chapter 6; and
• Quiz 3 - Chapters 8, 9 and 10.

You have only 1 attempt at each quiz so review your answers before you submit the quiz. The quizzes are essentially "open book" – so take your time and consider each question carefully. All quiz questions are from prominent sections of the textbook.

These quizzes are marked based on your knowledge of the work performed in the previous weeks identified.

The term paper assessment applies the course learning to a specific, historical Australian environmental issue. You will select one of the topics indicated below, and write a term paper which:

• introduces and describes the environmental event;
• describes the environmental policy and environmental management failure from the scientific literature, government and authoritative organisation references;
• discusses your assessment of the environment management mitigation and policy setting lessons to take forward, informed by the course learning activities; and
• therefore, answers two key questions: (1) what environmental policy/process lessons are evident; and (2) how could the “precautionary principle” have been applied to the issue?

Select one of these Environment policy issues:

1. Historical mine site rehabilitation – a case study such at Mount Morgan Queensland.
2. The mining and use of asbestos based building materials in Australia.
3. Coal seam gas mining affecting aquifers in Australia.
4. Australian Government use of firefighting foam and the impact on surface and groundwater.
5. Australian aquaculture – a case study such as QLD and Great Barrier Reef nutrients.
6. You may self-select a topic – written approval from the lecturer is required.

Your paper will be marked based on a criteria sheet available from the EVST1908 Moodle site – in summary the criteria are:

• the degree to which the paper is based on scholarly source material;
• paper structure, correct referencing and the degree to which it engages readers;
• content addresses environmental policy improvement following environmental failure addressing unit content.
• content addresses precautionary principle perspectives.