Dr. Claudine Grisard – c.grisard@qmul.ac.uk

Lecturers:

Dr. Claudine Grisard – week 1 to 4 (included) - Office hours: week 1 to 4:  Monday – 3:30 to 4:30 and Tuesday 1:30 to 2:30  / After week 4, by appointment -

Prof. Sukhdev Johal - week 4 to 11

Module Aims:

This class introduces emerging forms of accounting around Social and Environmental aspects, developed by organizations presented as answering the increasing societal demands for accountability with regard to the ecological crisis and social (in)justice. This class covers practical, theoretical and critical aspects of Social and Environmental accounting, that students are invited to discovers through various examples.

This class aims particularly to help students to develop their critical and analytical skills, and their abilities to organise and present their ideas in a convincing way.

 Module outline:

The module is organised around 8 topics (See calender below) that are covered in a chronological order week after week. If you scroll down you will find for each topic, a small description of it, of the work excepted on it, and the timeline of the various activities associated with each.

Assessments

Submission should be in WORLD, and in calibri front):

This class is composed of two pieces of assessment:

1)    30% is dedicated to weekly group work – each week the students are called to submit a group assessment that related to the weekly topic (One submission per group). Often it is a critical analysis of a csr report[1] (aligned with the final essay). The aim of this assessment is primarily to ensure that the students work regularly and to monitor their progress through a series of feedback. They will be assessed on how serious they take the job and learn from feedback.

Submission deadline: Every Saturday / 3 pm

Questions are disclosed on QM plus, at the end of the description of each topic. Students are expected to read ahead of class, the description. This is part of their class engagement.

Students are expected to submit at least 6 group essays, knowing there is 8 attempts. If not marks will be removed.

Submission boxes are located at the end of each topic

2)    70% of the mark will be assessed in a final essay, which is a 2500 words long reflective essay where students should answer the following question:

Provide a critical analysis of the CSR report of the organization of your choice (can be a company, an NGO..., not seen in class, through) and explain how CSR reporting is used by the company to present its activities as answering societal demand. This should be the most recent report published by the company.

Your argument should be balanced (taking different point of views, potentially contradictory), analytical (each argument must be grounded within examples, enabling to prove it) and use different elements from the contain of the class, that you will have selected in accordance with the point that you are trying to make. You are also highly encouraged to brings other relevant sources to support or contradict the point made within the CSR report.

 Submission deadline: To be announced by sbm adm. team.

For each of these assessments, a marking grid has been developed – see excel files enclosed.

Organisation of the module:

This module is organized around flip-classes, that is that before any classes, students must watch recorded lectures and eventually read some of the material posted on QMULPlus.
In class time will be divided in two parts:

1) During the part of the class (more than the first hour)s, students will have opportunities to ask clarifications about the material watched beforehand. In this part of the class the students will receive extensive feedback on their last groups submission, and also tips to how to improve and therefore master better the Learning Objectives. Finally, there will be a space where student will be able to reflect on their learning methods in order to acquire new one that enable then to 1) develop their own argument, critical thinking and analytical thinking.

2) In the second part of the class, you will start working with your group (6 people) on the weekly activity.

You will be asked to produce a writing summary (mini essay) about the weekly activity, for which you will receive group feedback every week, in accordance with the criteria assessed for the final essay. This weekly feedback, as well as the constant discussions will help you to learn step by step the skills and the knowledge on which you will be assessed in the final essay. Working regularly is a token of success.
However, most of learning is operated through independent learning (through video before class) and collective group work done in and after class!
It is expected that students to do the work before class, attend class, participate in class and in group work, on weekly basis. Through this process the student will have all the information to successfully pass this class. In the absence of such a commitment, the student is fully responsible to catch up with they have missed in terms of training and of information.

After each class students will have to work per group of 6 to solve the weekly question, in order to help them to get even more familiar with the research paper, but as well to start learning about combining arguments from several papers. The group submission date will be fixed in order to let each lecturer a chance to read each weekly submission and give appropriate feedback.

We are two lecturers, for this module. We will all follow the same pedagogy described above and will work together according to calendars described above.

Calendars:

Per Week

Per Topic