• DO NOT DO THIS UNIT. This cannot be stressed enough.

ESD looks like a really good unit on paper, and given the right coordinator it probably could be. In 2007, JamesTrevelyan was not that coordinator. Marking was arbitrary, subject to change without notice and inconsistent. Promises made by the teaching staff were counteracted or simply never kept. There was zero consistency between tutorial groups with regards to teaching quality, marking or content.

In 2007 there were two large assignments in the unit:

• Assignment 1 was the Wastewater Disposal assignment. Weeks of work in groups of 10 to produce an operational plan and risk analysis and management plans to transport "waste water" from one side of the campus to the other. Many plans were 60-120 pages long. After producing this mammoth plan, you actually have to act out your plan in a 3 hour simulation. Mistakes are penalized arbitrarily, inconsistantly and remorselessly and these mistakes can add up to 5% of your final grade for the unit.

• Assignment 2 is a negotiation assignment, teams of 4 represent a stakeholder in several parallel streams of the same negotiation. Marvel at how the tutors give you inconsistent, confusing and conflicting information such that nobody actually knows what they're meant to be doing any more. Hand in an assignment that is the work of 30 people consisting of 6+ hours of negotiation that can only be ~2000 words long. All while listening to pointless rants from JamesTrevelyan about how much your company would be paying for you to attend this meeting.

Craptastic assignments aside, the guest lecturers (there are quite a number of guest lectures) range from dead boring to quite interesting. Unfortunately you won't know how to relate the content in said lectures to what you're meant to be learning for the unit.

There was no accounting component in 2007.

In 2007 the exam was half multiple choice (with questions taken from a pre-provided sample quiz, though did require you to read a significant portion of the very poor set text) and half a 4-choose-1 1000-word essay, where the questions were provided in advance.

Taken in 2007 by JamesTrevelyan. Possibly taken in 2008 by MargotJupp.

Handbook entry

CategoryUnits