The Essay Re-imagined

The essay has long held sway as a dominant intellectual exercise for high school students. The pre-eminence of the essay is for good reason as it requires that students locate, make sense of and communicate ideas in a thoughtfully coherent manner. Yet, even before AI, teachers continually battle against plagiarism and other forms of cheating. Perhaps it is time for a re-think. Can we capitalize on the benefits of the process of developing essays but offer alternative outcomes. In this session, Garfield will share an approach that puts the intellectual challenge of essay writing in a “problem managing” context that provide safeguards against cheating while providing much better support for student learning. He will also explore ways the same benefits from the process of writing an essay can be captured in “curatorial thinking” that leads to a variety of more authentic alternative assessments such as podcasts or a blog series.