Discuss: If essays are dead, then where does that leave everything else? A response to: Shirley Alexander's 'Buying essays: how to make sure assessment is authentic'

Abstract

Professor Shirley Alexander is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Teaching, Learning & Equity) at the University of Technology, Sydney. On 12 November 2014, an article of hers appeared in The Conversation: 'Buying essays: how to make sure assessment is authentic.' That article traverses, in an abbreviated way, three significant concerns about university assessment tasks. Those three concerns, in sum, apparently render essays 'dead' 'as the primary form of assessment'.