DLR 1: Aging and Frailty – Introduction
Instructions
We Are All Responsible for Maintaining Academic Integrity
Read the Academic Integrity section of this Pressbook, including the resources we have provided.
While you are responsible for ensuring you do not commit academic dishonesty (e.g. plagiarism, inappropriate collaboration) according to any of the relevant offenses and explanations listed in McMaster’s Academic Integrity Policy (e.g. section 18 and Appendix 3), we have provided additional details regarding expectations for the LIFESCI 2L03 assessments. You are responsible for reading our expectations in regards to appropriate academic behavior (e.g. for group vs. individual work) and how to reference sources of information for individual assignments.
In order for your assignment to be graded, you must acknowledge on the assessment cover page that you have read the Academic Integrity section of this Pressbook and our expectations (see the links above). The cover page template provided to you contains this acknowledgement.
Refer to the ‘Introduction‘ section of the lab report writing guide (LRWG) for details on how to prepare this section
- This LRWG section, in addition to this assignment overview page, acts as the SPECIFICATIONS for what we are expecting for a submission to be graded with a pass
- Recall that DLRs are graded as pass/fail
- If you do not submit this assessment, it will be noted as 0 in the Avenue to Learn gradebook
- A submission that does not meet the specifications will receive a fail (noted as a 1 in the Avenue to Learn gradebook)
- A submission that meets the specifications will receive a pass (noted as a 2 in the Avenue to Learn gradebook)
- A submission that exceeds the specifications will receive a pass (noted as a 3 in the Avenue to Learn gradebook)
- These numerical notations are not percentages, scores, or anything that can be used to mathematically calculate a new value. In fact, a 2 and a 3 are identical when we record your final letter grade at the end of the semester.
- You should refer back to the GradeGrid if you want a refresher of how DLR completion is used to determine your final letter grade in the course at the end of the semester
- Before beginning, read the ‘introduction‘ section of the lab report writing guide.
- As you can see, an introduction can be broken down into five general sections (click to see an example with each section highlighted)
- Broad background about the topic
- Background more specific to the experiment
- Unknown problem of interest
- Question/hypothesis
- Experimental/study approach
- As you can see, an introduction can be broken down into five general sections (click to see an example with each section highlighted)
- You are going to write an introduction for the Aging and Frailty lab activity you participated in this week. We provided you with a brief background about frailty to give you some context to the activities you were doing in class, but we want you to dig deeper into the literature about how frailty is assessed in older individuals.
- The research question/hypothesis for this lab related to what you expected to happen in doing the physical battery activities in the lab. We asked you to draft a hypothesis in your ELN.
- The experimental/study approach is what you performed in the lab. You’ll want to briefly summarize that in your own words.
- Here are some topics you can address to get you started (Note: you do not need to “answer” all of these! They are provided to jump-start your research):
- What is frailty? How is it identified in people? How is it clinically assessed/diagnosed?
- What factors contribute to the development of frailty in individuals?
- What impact does the development of frailty have on a person?
- What types of tests are available for assessing frailty? What do they test for?
- What are some challenges with frailty tests in terms of their accuracy?
- What does it mean when a person is diagnosed as being frail? What types of interventions are available for improving a person’s frailty status?
- How is frailty associated with aging?
- Why is it important to study frailty?
- Must be 500 words or less, including in-text citations. Anything written after the word limit will not be considered when assessing your answer.
- NOTE: Your DLR assignments MUST include the course cover page in order to be graded. Failure to include the cover page will result in a failed assignment. We require the cover page because it serves as an agreement that you comply with the course academic integrity policy.
- Make sure you have read and understand our expectations regarding appropriate academic behaviour, specifically as it pertains to the use of quotes (no!), paraphrasing (yes!) and referencing (absolutely!)
- While you can use the personal notes you have taken during the class and group discussions in tutorial to help guide your research, you need to use appropriate resources and provide references when completing this assignment
- Details on the types of resources (references) that are appropriate for LIFESCI 2L03
- Help on evaluating different sources of information using the CRAAP criteria
