01Nothing ever showed you both courses at once.
Sub-terms open at various points through the year, which is genuinely useful: study can be fitted round shift work, paused without withdrawing, or accelerated through requirements. Chosen on purpose it is among the better structures on offer anywhere.
Chosen by default it produces one particular difficulty. Each course is signed up for on its own and each looks perfectly reasonable that way, so people end up carrying two writing-heavy courses through a single block having never actually decided to. No screen in the process ever put the pair in front of them together.
Putting them on one calendar takes about fifteen minutes and is free. Where the clash is real it is generally a single fortnight rather than eight bad weeks, and that fortnight costs far less to cover than either course.
02Two citation systems is a real expense.
Several programmes run author-date in some courses and footnotes in others, and a few ask a single student for both inside one block. That is badly underrated as a cost, because the two conventions part company precisely where slips are easy to make and easy for a marker to see.
- One puts the source at the foot of the page, the other inside the sentence. Those are different habits, and alternating between them produces hybrids belonging to neither.
- Title pages, heading levels and capitalisation each diverge in small visible ways, and the deductions add up quietly.
- List ordering and punctuation diverge too, so lifting a tidied reference out of one course and into another quietly imports a mistake.
- Software set for one convention will emit the other one wrongly, and it will do it to every entry alike, so nothing stands out and a meticulous student ends up uniformly incorrect.
- Name the convention and the edition on your slip. Programmes hold back versions on purpose, and a marker works from whichever handbook they were handed.
03The board is marked on the replies.
Threads here usually want a substantial opening post with citations, then replies of real length to classmates. The replies are where marks quietly leak, because students treat them as courtesy and the marking sheet does not agree.
Read the row covering replies and it usually wants what the opening post wanted, only smaller: attention to the particular argument, something to back it, and a contribution that carries the thread forward. Written properly that takes real time, and multiplied across eight weeks it becomes one of the heavier things in the course. It is the piece most people let go of first, priced at discussion and quiz help.
04What the desks cover.
Business, psychology, counselling, education, criminal justice, nursing and divinity all have somebody here, and counselling case work goes to a person who has practised rather than an academic writer. Where a marking sheet calls for worldview integration it is written substantively by somebody used to that register; where the sheet says nothing about it, none appears, since a paragraph tacked on to satisfy a box announces itself to any marker.
Research-heavy courses move to the essay desk, which is built around source work and approves the reading with you before drafting starts.
Carrelhouse is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Liberty University. The name is here to describe formats this house has already sat inside.
Send both syllabi
Every course in this sub-term, not only the difficult one, plus which citation system each requires.
Take the overlap read
Within two hours: the courses set against one another, the heavy fortnight identified, and a figure covering just that stretch.
Cover the narrow thing
Usually a fortnight, or one component. Broad cover exists and is seldom what the situation actually calls for.
Questions at this desk.
Is Turabian handled as well as author-date?
Both conventions, and we ask which one applies before starting rather than guessing, because some students need each of them inside a single block. Footnotes formatted properly, or author-date. Where a programme issues its own house rules those outrank the general standard, since your marker reads from them.
Can the boards be covered on their own?
Yes, and Liberty students request it more than anything else. Opening threads carrying the citations required, and replies written to the row that marks them rather than as good manners. Over eight weeks those add up to one of the heavier parts of a course, so letting them go returns more evenings than anything at that price.
Two heavy courses this sub-term. What first?
Send both syllabi and let somebody read them together, which is the step enrolment never performs for you. The clash usually gathers in a single fortnight where two major pieces meet. Knowing where it falls occasionally lets you move something yourself and spend nothing at all.
How is worldview integration treated?
As a marked criterion, handled by somebody who has written in that register. Where a course calls for it, it is addressed properly and in the criterion's own language. Where a course is silent, nothing of the sort turns up, because an afterthought paragraph reads exactly like an afterthought.
How is a sub-term priced?
By component. Eight weeks of board coverage, one research paper and a whole course are billed on unrelated bases, so a single number for the block would tell you nothing. Send the syllabi; the itemised answer arrives the same day, free, and any line can be struck out.
