Is Plagiarism Creating an Opportunity for the Development of New Assessment Strategies?

Abstract

Have traditional student assessment strategies such as the formal written paper outlived their usefulness? Given reports of plagiarism in post-secondary institutions and the ease with which students can ‘cut and paste’ content from online sources, the relevance and applicability of traditional assessment strategies need to be examined in light of these technological advances. The introduction of technology and the Internet into classrooms has been the most important educational change to occur in the last one hundred years, yet assessment strategies reflect the characteristics of the printing press to a greater extent than the capabilities of technology and the Internet. The paper explores a connection to the visual arts in terms of creation, re-creation, the ‘desire to conceal’, and contemporary means of interpretation. A search of the literature reveals a need for teaching and learning environments to evolve along with a technologically-based society.