New Era for Essays :: Wessex Scene Online

New Era for Essays

8th November 2007
Pete Bryant

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Discussions are being held by several departments across the University, following recent proposals to allow electronic submission of work in all degree subjects.

If the idea is approved, all Southampton students will be able to email essays and assignments to their tutors as opposed to handing them over in person.

If approved, the new rules will mainly affect the humanities discipline, where the current system requires students to print out two copies of assessed work and journey to campus to submit it for marking.

The new system is set to be introduced gradually, with changes likely to be seen in Semester Two. After this trial period, a decision will be made as to whether electronic submissions will become the norm for all subjects.

However, Barry Sloan, Head of Education for English, was keen to stress that any changes would initially be on a very small scale. "We are taking advice from other subjects who already use electronic submissions and we will be proceeding with caution," he said.

"We don’t know when it will be introduced, but whatever happens students will not be disadvantaged" he added.

There are several advantages to dealing with work electronically. One is the ease in which plagiarism could be detected; a simple scan could check thousands of sources in seconds for signs of copying. It has been argued that students would save money as multiple printouts of essays would no longer be necessary. Storage would also be made very simple as assignments could be saved to discs.

There are, of course, downsides to the proposed system as well. Because all work must be sent for moderation, hard copies of essays are needed. "If work is being printed after submission anyway, it seems pointless not to print it in the first place," Barry commented.

There are also fears that the health and safety of tutors would be threatened due to reading off a computer screen for long periods. Barry admitted: "Although I am fairly agnostic on the idea, I don’t like the thought of doing all my marking online."

Many students are already familiar with the concept of emailing work come deadline day, and it is a method that has been successfully used by many subjects already. At whatever stage electronic submissions are brought in as a universal system for all courses, students will be kept informed and briefed on any changes.