Should We Really ABOLISH the Term Paper? A Response to the NY Times | HASTAC - 46 views
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I no longer engage in a ritual that too often happens among assigners of research papers (you know who you are), that frantic last week reading and marking 50 term papers before grades are due. Too often, in the old days, I would read and write comments on papers that wound up in a box outside my office door that few students ever came by to collect--a pointless and deadening pedagogy if there ever was one.
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Interestingly, the tipping point in these classes is when someone the student doesn't know, an anonymous stranger, responds to their work. When it is substantive, the student is elated and surprised that their words were taken seriously. When it is rude or trollish, the student is offended. Both responses are good. The Internet needs more people committed to its improvement, to serious discourse.