Grading of literature reviews

The table below provides guidelines regarding the grading of literature reviews. A student can compensate a weak/missing element in the literature review with at least “very good” performance on another element, with the exception of criterion 1.

A – Excellent

fulfils formal criteria (1&2 below), clearly accounts for criteria 3 to 5, and contains critical assessments demonstrating some independent thinking regarding weaknesses/strengths of single articles and elaborates on how the different articles relate to the general academic discourse more generally and sketches own ideas as to potential next steps in this research agenda (see criteria 7 & 8 for the last two points)

B – Very good

fulfils formal criteria (1&2 below), clearly accounts for criteria 3 to 5, and contains critical assessments demonstrating some independent thinking regarding weaknesses/strengths of single articles and/or elaborates on how the different articles relate to the general academic discourse more generally and/or sketches own ideas as to potential next steps in this research agenda (at least two of the three last elements covered by the review) (see criteria 7 & 8 for the last two points)

C – Good

fulfils formal criteria (1&2 below), clearly accounts for criteria 3 to 5, and contains critical assessments demonstrating some independent thinking regarding weaknesses/strengths of single articles or elaborates on how the different articles relate to the general academic discourse more generally or sketches own ideas as to potential next steps in this research agenda (see criteria 7 & 8 for the last two points)

D – Satisfactory

fulfils formal criteria (1&2 below); provides incomplete accounts of criteria 3 to 5; displays limited independent thinking regarding other criteria

E – Sufficient

partly fulfils formal criteria (1&2 below) or provides incomplete accounts of criteria 3 to 5; displays no independent thinking regarding other criteria

F – Fail

does not fulfil formal criteria (1&2 below) and fails to address criteria 3 to 5; displays no independent thinking regarding other criteria

Requirements communicated to students:

  1. length of the review 800-1000 words (excluding bibliographic references) and use of a standardized formatting for your in-text citations and your bibliography.

2. you should review at least four academic publications, which can be journal articles or book chapters. This excludes, among others, evaluation or audit reports, white papers, newspaper articles, and blogposts. You can use publications written in Norwegian (or another Scandinavian language); the publications you review cannot be part of the syllabus of the course.

3. include a brief introduction explaining and narrowing down the topic

4. brief explanation of how you performed your search, which databases and search terms you used, and why you selected the publications included in the literature review.

5. include information on the different contributions’ research question, their research design, and key findings

6. ideally, you are able to spot weaknesses of single publications, contradictory findings or definitions in the different publications, or aspects these publications do not cover, but which you think they should

7. A literature review is a presentation of the academic discourse relevant to you research question and is designed to give the reader a sense of how much is known about a certain issue, and where knowledge gaps might be located.

8. Knowledge gaps are aspects of the academic discourse that are still disputed or unclear. A knowledge gap might represent something that is not known, something that is known but in dispute or something that has been more or less taken for granted but the author provides a good reason to cast doubt.

Published Jan. 9, 2019 10:35 AM - Last modified Jan. 9, 2019 10:35 AM