CQUniversity Unit Profile.

This unit is designed to facilitate students' critical thinking and collaborative research skills. Accordingly, the unit will present students with complex and sometimes controversial issues, in order to develop an awareness of how intellectual property law impacts socially and globally, a keen sense of inquiry, and motivated, collaborative research.

The latter part of this unit is comprised of a series of weekly video-conferenced workshop activities that explore various themes in the IP debate. In this task, you will deliver a group presentation as follows:

• select one of the workshop modules from weeks 8-11 and form a group for that week's workshop presentation,
• prepare as a group for the workshop,
• each group member will present a part of the workshop (which should last 45 minutes in total), and
• all group members will act as discussion leaders at the end of the workshop, to facilitate other students' understanding of the topic during the zoom session. You will need to leave sufficient question time (10 minutes) for discussion and debate following your presentation.

There will be a limited number of leaders in each workshop, depending on the number of students in the unit. You will be able to select your workshop on Moodle from week 1 of term.

This assessment will also require written work:

• a 2000-word paper (group submission), and
• a 500-word reflection (individual submission) on what you have learned in the process of preparing and presenting the workshop.

Every student in every group is expected to contribute in a fair and equitable manner to the final group presentation and group paper.

The task is worth a total of 50%, or 50 marks:

• the group presentation will be worth 20% (20 marks),
• the group paper will be worth 15% (15 marks), and
• the individual reflection will be worth 15% (15 marks).

**Note: the work must be submitted as follows:

1. the workshop must be presented on the date and time of the usual workshop/tutorial scheduled for that topic,
2. the written group paper may be submitted up to one week after the date of the presentation, to allow for refinements and discussion following on from the workshop tutorial, and
3. the individual paper must also be submitted within one week of the date of the presentation, to allow for reflection following the preparation and presentation process.

**Note: your individual end of semester research paper (see next assessment task) must be on a different topic than this workshop presentation and paper.

Research paper 2000 words.

In this unit, as noted above, you will encounter some complex and controversial subject matter which will hopefully inspire your research curiosity.

You are strongly encouraged to pursue your own particular research interests within the bounds of the unit material. You may develop your own, unique research question to pursue (in consultation with the unit coordinator, who will be able to provide you with assistance in scoping your research question appropriately for the task).

If you decide to develop your own research question to write on, you must have emailed your paper proposal to the unit coordinator for approval by the end of week 4. Your paper proposal must demonstrate that you have considered the following issues in order to submit the paper on time and in a well-researched manner:

1. What is the research question or problem that you wish to write about? Clearly define the research problem and how you want to address it;
2. Why do you want to research this issue? You should show that you have at least conducted a preliminary review of the literature to demonstrate it is a research question worthy of study.
3. How are you going to do it? You should show that you have a defined schedule for your full literature review that is achievable within approximately one month to allow time for the write-up of your paper.

If you do not wish to develop your own research question to write on, you will submit a final individual paper on one of these topics:

· “Intellectual property rights have overstepped the bounds of reasonableness, and cannot be justified in their present form.” Discuss. (Here, you need to decide whether or not you agree with the statement and argue accordingly. You can discuss IP rights generally using examples from different fields, or you may select one IP right in particular and focus on its merits or otherwise).

· What is the key priority for reform of the Australian intellectual property law system? (Here, you need to choose one of the proposed reforms in the IP Arrangements Report by the Productivity Commission, demonstrate the urgency for reform, track any implementation efforts, and justify your support or otherwise for the current approach with original research).

You are encouraged to discuss and debate your research, and the ideas you have formed for your paper, with others in the cohort. However, your final paper submission must be your own work.

**Note: your end of semester research paper must be on a different topic than your workshop presentation and paper.

As noted above, this unit is designed to foster a collaborative research community. You are rewarded for sharing, engaging in discussion and cultivating the participation of others. In this assessment item you may focus on synchronous or asynchronous discussion, depending on your primary mode of engagement.

Synchronous discussion

If you focus on synchronous discussion you will need to contribute meaningfully contribute to the discussion at tutorial workshops each week between weeks 1 to 10. To satisfy the requirements for this task, it will be necessary to demonstrate real critical analysis and insight into both the material set for that week and the arguments and insights that other students are sharing in the workshop/tutorial each week. See the rubric below for posts in asynchronous work, as it will apply mutatis mutandis (with appropriate adjustment) to synchronous work.

Asynchronous discussion

If you focus on asynchronous discussion, you will need to meaningfully contribute to the discussion fora each week between weeks 1 to 10, as the topics for that week are scheduled to be discussed. It will not be sufficient to make contributions in the discussion fora 'en masse' at or towards the end of term. We cannot cultivate a sense of 'community of inquiry' if we do not have a sense of 'student presence' on our learning journey throughout the term.

In order to obtain the requisite marks for this component in asynchronous mode, it will not be sufficient to simply post up your comments without considering and commenting on others' posts. It will be necessary to demonstrate real critical analysis and insight into both the material set for that week and the arguments and insights that other students are sharing in the discussion fora.

Please refer to the rubric below.