University professors should encourage students to submit assignments in unique ways and retire typical paper submissions.
The pandemic has transformed the nature of education, demonstrating that online learning is an avenue with proven potential and success. The ways students can showcase their knowledge should also be experimented with for the sake of engagement.
Knowledge can be shown in many ways. YouTube documentaries, creative writing pieces, advertisements and children’s books are just some ways students can prove they understand course concepts without writing dozens of pages in a traditional academic essay.
Assignments like these can be memorable, reinforcing an end goal of education: to remember and apply knowledge outside educational settings. A student may forget a paper they wrote, but they’re likely to remember a creative project that required them to present information in a unique way.
This is not to say that research papers are stagnant or less valuable; writing research papers is the hallmark of academia and an important skill to learn. But in a world where students are increasingly challenged to think outside the box and demonstrate unique skills, they should have assignments that challenge them to innovate.
Both kinds of assignments serve a purpose—especially for upper-year students who want to pursue master’s degrees, which require strong examples of published academic papers. However, as the nature, function and structure of education are reexamined, students should have the freedom and challenge to showcase their knowledge in non-traditional styles.
Featured graphic from file.
