“Human Geography, Places and Regions in Global Context”, 6th edition, Knox, Marston. ISBN 978-0321769664

Ch. 1-11.

Critical Analysis Essay Instructions
Assignment Objectives:
After working through all the course materials, students are required to provide a meaningful analysis of current global patterns and trends related to human geography. Students are required to take what they have learned from the course materials and describe, explains, and analyze the global patterns and trends that are likely to exist in the year 2062. Simply put, analyze how general patterns of human geography are likely to change in the coming decades and exist by 2062.
Students need to demonstrate their ability to use what they have learned to provide an analysis of this question using course concepts and terms. This will require students make connections between seemingly disparate bodies of information and issues discussed throughout this course. Finally, students will have to express this analysis coherently in a written essay.
General Assignment Requirements:
The essay should be single-spaced, one inch margins all around, 12 point font in Times New Roman, Cambria, or Garamond fonts, and two pages in length. The essay is worth 50 points.
Do not including anything at the start of your essay besides your name, title, and then the actual essay text (do not put my name, course name, date, etc). Only one attempt is allowed. The due date is listed in the Course Schedule link in the Start Here folder.
Students should save a copy of their essay before submitting the finished work. Essays can be submitted as attachments in doc, docx, pdf, or rtf formats through the Assignments tool.
Students do not need any additional information beyond the course materials to complete the essay. In fact, students that rely on outside sources, such as online encyclopedias, generally do worse on the essay.
Points will be deducted for failure to follow these instructions.
Specific Assignment Requirements:
Rather than simply summarizing course content, student essays will be assessed on their ability to demonstrate that they have read and thought critically about the assigned question and how it relates to material covered in the %uFFFDlectures%uFFFD and textbook. Students must focus on analysis, synthesis, and explanation, rather than repeating, describing, or listing.
Note that analysis is different than summary. A summary just repeats what is already said or happened, while analysis explains why something happened / will happen, what implications that might have, etc. Simply repeating something is not a very useful skill in college or in most professional fields, at least compared to meaningful analysis. For example, a summary of a sporting event merely describes what happened: Team A scored, then Team B scored, etc, etc, and Team A finished with more points, so it won.
Analysis of a sporting event would explain, interpret, and assess the game to answer why Team A scored more, how it accomplished that, what this result means. Analysis is thinking about the events and organizing the information into an argument that may not be readily apparent from simply watching the game or summarizing the game afterwards. Apply this simple example to this assignment. Don%uFFFDt just read and repeat or list terms and definitions copied from the book. Use the main course concepts and trends related to agriculture, economics, population, politics, etc. to analyze the assigned question.
I would strongly recommend beginning this assignment very early in the semester. Essays written the day before the deadline tend to be rather low quality.