Sure--yes--the student will learn something if they actually wrote a 20-page paper on some given topic. But how are you going to evaluate their ability to compose the 20-page argument?
replyI would prefer not to be confrontational here, but I am having a hard time imagining that you've deeply considered the pedagogy of how to teach and evaluate students on squishy skills like this.
Knowing a bunch of facts about something is a world apart from structuring a compelling in-depth argument about it.
In the simplest case, where we'll say the exam question was precisely the topic of the 20 page paper, the candidate would be golden. Of course, it's unlikely in a 3 hr. exam that you'll be asked to write a 20 page response; but in edited form, you could definitely produce three cogent pages about some particular aspect of the original paper - if you've done the work. If you truly wrote the 20 page paper, you can surely produce three literate, cogent, responsive and topical pages.
replyThis assumes that the assignments and the exam cover the same material. That's not always the case.
replyThat would be really poor course design :-)
replyThere are many disciplines in which students work on effectively distinct projects.
replyFor example, the life-changingly-well-designed newswriting course I took in college assigned every single student a different story to spend several weeks reporting out so that we wouldn't all be out harassing the same poor people for interviews.
Genuinely interested. What was the final like? This seems more in the experimental science (ok, journalism) category. I may have to adjust my thinking to be more expansive and also include things like "vocational".
replyGrammar and AP style rules, iirc. (I may not. It's been enough years now. I did try and fail to find the syllabus in my box of five-star notebooks. We mostly used reporters notebooks for this class, and I took it over the summer. The materials are probably in a plastic bag somewhere...)
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