CASE STUDIES IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Final Exam Review

 

Your final exam is cumulative.  The set-up will be much like the midterm – but longer.  There will be long essay questions, approximately ten identification questions, and a handful of short answer questions.  You will have some degree of choice.  As with the midterm, I recommend you:

 

I. GENERAL RULES OF THUMB

A. Time

Essay tests such as this one put a high premium on time. You have to be more than just familiar with the material.  You will need to thoroughly understand it. Of course, you will not have enough time to commit everything you know about a topic to paper.  Concentrate on the most important aspects (with some specific examples that illustrate your point) and how they relate to each other.  Doing all of this successfully requires that you BUDGET YOUR TIME.

 

B. Organization

Even though you are pressed for time you still need to be organized in your writing.  I suggest you take a minute or two to outline your answer before you even begin writing it.  This also provides a check against completely omitting any one part of the answer. 

 

C. Writing Style

Remember that you will be graded on your ability to express your ideas clearly as well as on the content of your ideas.  This is, after all, a politics course where communication (or lack thereof) is essential to determining the outcome.  Subject content is emphasized first and foremost in evaluating your answers, but the clarity of your writing determines how successfully you get that message across.  In simple terms, this means you need to write legibly, use proper grammar, and avoid awkward sentence structure.

 

 

II. SPECIFIC QUESTION TYPES

A. Identification (IDs/Short Essay)

There will be about ten identification questions that are best treated as mini-essays.  A complete answer here will be approximately six to ten sentences in length.  You must include a definition, historical origin or reason for existence, examples, and relevant theoretical analysis.  In many cases it is also helpful to refer to competing perspectives.

 

B. Essay

There will be two or three long essays on the final.  A complete answer should contain:

1) an introduction with your thesis

2) body w/approximately three to four main points (it may be helpful to approach these as IDs)

3) conclusion which summarizes thesis and supporting points and offers suggestions, solutions

 

C. Short Answer

There will be a handful of short answer questions that ask you to identify a major theory, point out the weaknesses in an argument, or simply identify a key contributor to international political theory.

 

 

III. COURSE MATERIAL

This final covers all readings and class discussions since the beginning of the semester.  As you prepare, think about both the intricacies of the concepts themselves and the larger picture of how they relate to one another.  Use your syllabus as a guide here:

 

 Eco-tourism                        Trade & the Environment                    Biodiversity                    Infectious Disease

 Deforestation                       Dam Development                             Oil Addiction                  Black Triange

 Aral Sea                              Solar Energy                                      Globalization                   Rwanda

 Hispaniola                            NGOs & Civil Society                       Population Growth         Consumption

 Preservation                         Conservation                                     Interdependence             Dualism

 Standing                               Environmental Justice                         Wind Power                  Nuclear Energy

 

IV. REVIEW ASSGINMENT

In preparation for class next time, you must submit two questions along with an appropriate answer from each of the following categories by midnight before our last class meeting.  Email these to me at: mgunter@rollins.edu. This will encourage you to start thinking about preparing for the final next week.  The categories to address include:

 

1. Theoretical framework

2. Social issues

3. Energy & waste

4. Economics vs. environmental protection?

5. Conclusions