Assignment One Seeing equality and diversity: A Visual Analysis essay | Online Assignment Help

Assignment One Seeing equality and diversity: A Visual Analysis essay

The aim of this short essay assignment is to get you think about where our understandings of difference come from. Our exercise in the introductory workshops in Week 1 and 2 highlighted how we make assumptions about people’s characteristics based on a stock of social and cultural ‘knowledge’ and this has implications for how we might act and think in a workplace setting. This assignment continues that idea by asking where does that ‘stock’ come from? In particular this assignment focuses on one important source, the images of people at work that circulate in mass news, entertainment and social media.

What you are required to do:

1. Find an image online that portrays something about equality and diversity at work to you. Copy or download the image and paste it into a document. Directly underneath, add the reference for the source where you found it.

2. After your chosen image, write 500 words critiquing how it portrays equality and/or diversity issues at work. Prompts to help you do this are given below. References are not included in the word count.

3. Upload your document as a PDF through the link on the unit Moodle page by the deadline of 23:55 Weds 31st October. The system will shut down after this time so don’t leave it to the last minute!

Guidance/ FAQs

 Your work will be graded using the marking criteria in APPENDIX TWO below – please familiarise yourself with the requirements and ask if you are unsure.

 You should include academic references to support your discussion, based on the material introduced in the unit so far and the materials on visual analysis provided for you. Work that includes references to your own, additional research into the topics raised, will be graded more highly (see criteria below).

 The lecture in Week 5 gives further advice on this assignment and there are readings and resources in the ‘Assignment 1’ folder in the assessments area on the unit Moodle site.

 You can choose any image you like. What’s important is that it ‘speaks’ to you about some kind of equality/ diversity at work (E&D) issue – positively or negatively it doesn’t matter.

 The image must connect to something related to the workplace. It’s OK to choose an image that address an E&D issue outside the workplace, but you must clearly show how this affects factors to do with work and/or the management of organizations.

 You will find it easiest to google for terms such as ‘sexuality in the workplace’, ‘gender quality at work’, ‘ageing workforce’ and so on – pick something from the unit topics that interests you and see what you find.

 Make sure you visit the actual site, or report/ article, where the image appears in its original setting – this is what you should include as the source not the search engine

 It could be a photograph, cartoon, meme, drawing, graphic, for example.  It could show people at work, or be an image that was included in a report or story about E&D at

work issues.  You can take it from any media source, for example: broadcast news site such as BBC,

broadsheet or tabloid newspapers, images circulated on Facebook, something you have found

2

on a company’s website, or the documents available there, a stock photo from an image-house such as Getty images, even a still from a YouTube movie – be creative!

APPENDIX ONE: SOME THINKING PROMPTS

What particular features of the image are generating your assumptions?

Do you think this image reinforces or challenges stereotypical assumptions?

What opinions could a viewer draw from this image in relation to E&D at work?

Why did you choose this image as representing something about E&D at work?

Framing? People? Gaze?

Objects?

Who is likely to see this image?

3

APPENDIX TWO: MARKING CRITERIA

This assignment is worth 20% of the overall unit mark and is graded/ rounded up to 0 or 5 point bands according to the following criteria (e.g., 50, 55, 60, 65 etc.).

These criteria are in additional to the generic university criteria relating to scholarship (e.g., presentation and referencing) which can be found in your student/ course handbook.

Grade Criteria 80+ Exceptionally insightful analysis showing highly advanced level of

understanding. Likely to be based on a novel choice of image and/or E&D context, with extensive additional reading and research to support sophisticated points made either about the way the image is ‘working’ on the viewer, the dimension of E&D discussed, or both.

70-79 Distinctive and insightful analysis showing excellent understanding. Likely to be based on a novel choice of image and/or E&D context with significant additional academic and policy reading and research to support thoughtful points made either about the way the image is ‘working’ on the viewer, the dimension of E&D discussed, or both.

60-69 Logical and relevant analysis showing good to very good understanding. Strong choice of appropriate image and/or E&D context with some additional academic and policy reading and research to support relevant points made. Likely to emphasise the dimension of E&D discussed, but include some awareness of how the image is ‘working’ on the viewer.

50-59 Solid analysis showing adequate to good understanding. Appropriate choice of image, but likely to be from a more ‘obvious’ source. Draws from only readings provided on the unit and/or uses additional academic and policy readings in incorrect or superficial manner. May show limited awareness of how the image is ‘working’ on the viewer and/or a ‘common sense’ understanding of the E&D dimensions discussed.

40-49 Limited analysis but enough to show threshold understanding with some errors. Image may lack relevance or appropriateness, with little or no supporting academic and policy evidence used (either from the unit or elsewhere). Likely to be limited to describing the image and/or simplistic awareness of E&D dimension discussed.

26-39 (FAIL) Little or no analysis, showing misunderstanding of task and/or topic. Image may be inappropriate or irrelevant. No serious attempt to use supporting evidence, either academic, policy or popular sources.

25 and below (FAIL)

No serious attempt at assignment, or task and/or topic misunderstood