Creative Alternatives to the Term Paper

Marybelle C. Keim
As an undergraduate and as a graduate student, I wondered why term papers were so popular with my professors. These so-called research papers were always due at the end of the term and were heavily weighted in the awarding of a final grade. In most cases, these papers were hastily written, because three, four, or even five such documents were expected, one for each class. Occasionally topics were assigned, but the usual directions were, "Research something related to this course and write about it." At no time did anyone ask to see my note cards or give any feedback on an early draft of the paper. Consequently, most of my peers and I became expert at finding appropriate references and stringing them together into a coherent but lackluster paper. At the beginning of the next term, the papers could usually be retrieved from the professors, often with no comments or marks, save for a letter grade. I really did wonder if anyone had even given the papers a cursory glance, let alone a careful review.
As a fledgling professor in the early 1970s teaching graduate courses in higher education (e.g., college teaching, higher education curriculum, or-
Marybelle C. Keim is an assistant professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
ganization and administration, community college), I too, assigned term papers. I knew from reading McKeachie ( 1969) that term papers were supposed to employ the powers of analysis and integration and that understanding and original thinking were the outcomes of such assignments. So I reasoned, "If it's good enough for McKeachie, it's good enough for me."
At the end of my first quarter, students dutifully handed in heavily referenced papers. There would be a topic sentence, followed by numerous quotes and paraphrased ideas, then another topic sentence, followed by more references, and so and on. Often, I wondered if the students had used a commercial term paper company or had retyped an old paper from a sorority/ fraternity file. Others bordered on completely plagiarized ideas. During the next quarter, I painstakingly discussed commercial term paper outfits, originality, and plagiarism, but in spite of my exhortations, the final results were not much better.
I continued to read about college teaching. New Directions for Teaching and Learning did not come into existence until the 1980s, so the best sources at the time were the many volumes of Improving College and University Teaching. I found some apparently excellent advice about term papers by D. Cunningham ( 1975). Among his suggestions was to have "students submit written proposals for their topics by the end of the second or third week. This will encourage them to start their research early and will allow you to check their progress" (220).
The next quarter, I followed Cunningham's advice. Some apsects of the papers improved, but the products were still disappointing. By then, I was aware that most professors who published rarely wrote very much during academic terms. They did most of their writing during leaves, breaks, and holidays. So, I pondered, "If professors can produce only one or two publishable articles/chapters a year, how can students write three, four, or more long papers each term?"
I went back to the literature again. McKeachie ( 1969) confirmed my suspicions when he wrote that his experiences with term papers had "not always been happy ones" (120), and Eble ( 1976) described the term paper as a bad assignment. Eble ( 1988 :133) pointed out five major problems with term papers: (1) teachers do not give enough specific attention to the nature and aims of the paper, (2) "too much weight in the course is given the term paper," (3) students can get others to prepare their papers for them, (4) students have too many papers to write each term "to do any of them justice," and (5) faculty do not "provide the feedback that serious written work deserves."
At this point, I completely revised all my courses to eliminate term papers. Instead I gave numerous written as-