ETHC 101 CAPSTONE ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

Please the attached Rubric and Sample for the Capstone Essay

Summary

The final assignment for ETHC101 is a capstone essay that brings all of the knowledge and skills developed in this course to bear on a single ethical issue. Each student will write a paper of 2100 to 2400 words (total, including the title page, table of contents, quotations, footnotes, and bibliography), in current Turabian format, that combines the insights and arguments of the third and fourth discussion boards into a single carefully-articulated work.

Content

Begin your paper with a brief introductory paragraph that clearly states what positions you are going to argue for. State what metaethic you will defend, the issue in applied ethics to which you will be applying it, and the conclusion(s) on that issue that you want to defend.

Next provide a lengthy and detailed explanation of your metaethic. This will likely reflect the metaethic that you argued for in your Discussion Board Three thread and the feedback that you received from the classmate or classmates who responded to your thread. Here you can go into much more detail than you could in the Discussion Board, which was limited to 600 words. If you use half of your paper to develop your metaethic, then it will contain approximately 1100 words, which means that it will be roughly twice as long as your Discussion Board thread was.

Once you have fully explicated and argued for your metaethic, proceed to an application of that metaethic to the applied ethics issue that you discussed in your Discussion Board Four thread. This discussion may end up being twice as long as your discussion board thread was. Add detail, nuance, and argumentation, providing a fairly complete and comprehensive argument for approaching the issue the way that you do. You may illustrate the issue with real-life examples, but please do not fill your paper with anecdotes. You should anticipate possible objections to your approach to the issue and respond to them in an objective and informed manner. (For ideas on how others might object to your approach, a good place to begin would be your classmate’s reply to your DB4 thread, but you needn’t stop there. Your own imagination and the many books and articles that have been published on issues in applied ethics can provide a wealth of possible arguments relevant to every issue.)

Your final paragraph(s) should reflect that you have accomplished your thesis. It should recap what you have accomplished and how you have accomplished it.

Research

This paper is not required to utilize any sources outside of those that were used in the class (the two textbooks, the videos, and the PointCast presentations), but use of additional resources is permitted and encouraged. At the minimum the paper should utilize the resources from the class. All resources used must be listed in the bibliography and any resources quoted, paraphrased, or alluded to must be documented via footnotes formatted according to Turabian.

While your footnotes and bibliography (if you had one) did not count toward the word count for your discussion boards, for this capstone essay both the footnotes and the bibliography count toward the word count. In other words, the 2400 word limit is all-inclusive. You will be penalized if you exceed the limit, so please do not.

Format

Your paper must begin with a title page that includes a paper title, your name, the date, and the course name and number. The second page of your paper must be a table of contents. The last page of your paper must be devoted to your bibliography. The paper must utilize 12 point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one inch margins. It must be double-spaced rather than triple-spaced between paragraphs and there should be only one space after the end of each sentence.

Any documentation in the body of your paper must be done via footnotes formatted according to Turabian. If you are not familiar with how to do this, simply look it up online. There are many websites that explain Turabian formatting. Footnotes should be single-spaced 10 point Times New Roman font.

Your paper must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document. If you submit it as a .pdf or anything other than a Microsoft Word document it will not be graded.

Format Example

Title Page

Table of Contents

Body of Paper:

· Introduction

· Metaethic

· Application

· Conclusion

Bibliography

Miscellany 

Proofread your work before handing it in! Errors of spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation will affect your grade. This is a university-level writing assignment. Please write accordingly.

The deadline for this assignment is 11:59pm on Friday of Unit 8. Submit your finished paper via the SafeAssign link on Blackboard. SafeAssign is a program that checks your work for plagiarism. Plagiarism is immoral, unchristian, and will not be tolerated. The consequences for plagiarism are significant and SafeAssign makes it easy to detect. If you are not sure what plagiarism is, it is your responsibility to find out. Ignorance is no excuse. Do not plagiarize!

This assignment contributes to achieving and assessing the achievement of all four of the Course Learning Outcomes.

This assignment is due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Friday of Module/Week 8.

ETHC 101 Capstone Essay Grading Rubric

 

Criteria	Levels of Achievement
Structure 60 pts.	Advanced	Proficient	Developing	Not present
Length 15 pts.	15 points Meets length requirement: 2100-2400 words (including footnotes, title page, table of contents, and bibliography).	10 to 14 points Word count exceeds 2400.	1 to 9 points Word count is less than 2100 words.	0 points Document is blank
Components 15 pts.	15 points Contains a title page, table of contents, footnotes, and bibliography.	10 to 14 points Some required components missing.	1 to 9 points Many required components missing.	0 points All required components are missing.
Format 15 pts.	15 points Body of paper is double-spaced with 1-inch margins and 12 pt. Times New Roman font; footnotes are single-spaced 10pt. Times New Roman; footnotes and bibliography are formatted according to Turabian.	10 to 14 points Some degree of deviation from the proscribed format.	1 to 9 points Considerable deviation from the proscribed format.	0 points Complete deviation from the proscribed format.
Proofreading 15 pts.	15 points Free of grammatical, syntactical, punctuation, spelling, and other such errors.	10 or 14 points Some grammatical, syntactical, punctuation, spelling, and other such errors.	1 to 9 points Many grammatical, syntactical, punctuation, spelling, and other such errors.	0 points Pervasive grammatical, syntactical, punctuation, spelling, and other such errors.
Content 140 pts.	Advanced	Proficient	Developing	Not present
Thesis Statement 20 pts.	19 to 20 points First paragraph includes a thesis statement and final paragraph(s) reflect accomplishment of the thesis.	14 to 18 points Contains something that is close to a proper thesis statement and the conclusion basically reflects its accomplishment.	1 to 13 points Thesis statement is unclear and conclusion does not clearly reflect its accomplishment.	0 points No thesis statement and conclusion is unconnected to any thesis
Style 30 pts.	27 to 30 points Appropriately academic style of writing, free of slang, informalities, sermonizing, anecdotes, etc.	21 to 26 points Occasional lapses from academic style, such as slang, informalities, sermonizing, anecdotes, etc.	1 to 20 points Frequent lapses from academic style, such as slang, informalities, sermonizing, anecdotes, etc.	0 points Style is completely non-academic
Tone 30 pts.	27 to 30 points Appropriately philosophical tone: obvious care for objectivity and respectful consideration of multiple perspectives; nuanced and insightful discussion of positions and arguments.	21 to 26 points Occasional lapses into subjectivity; some one-sidedness; positions and arguments are painted with a broad brush, etc.	1 to 20 points Many lapses into subjectivity; consistent one-sidedness; positions and arguments lack detail and nuance, etc.	0 points No attempt at writing with a philosophical tone.
Understanding 30 pts.	27 to 30 points Discussion reflects detailed knowledge of the issues in metaethics taught in the course and very appropriate application of this knowledge to the applied ethics issue selected.	21 to 26 points Discussion reflects some knowledge of the issues in metaethics taught in the course and a reasonable attempt to apply this knowledge to a selected issue in applied ethics.	1 to 20 points Discussion reflects some but not much knowledge of metaethical issues, perhaps with some minor confusion, and some attempt to apply this to the chosen issue.	0 points Discussion reflects no knowledge of the metaethical issues taught in the course.
Argument 30 pts.	27 to 30 points Argumentation is logical (free of fallacies, including appeal to emotion).	21 to 26 points Argument is basically logical, though with some appeal to emotion, unsupported assertions, or other similar issues.	1 to 20 points Argument falls short of being logical by committing multiple fallacies, appealing to emotion, making unsupported assertions, or other problems of this sort.	0 points No argument i