<p>^ barrons,</p>
<p>As an academic who regularly assigns and grades papers, I’d say the purpose of a paper assignment is to get the student to:
- develop/exercise/demonstrate research skills
- develop/exercise/demonstrate writing skills
- develop/exercise/demonstrate critical/analytical thinking skills
- develop/exercise/demonstrate skills in identifying and developing a paper/research topic and in constructing a persuasive argument
- learn by in-depth self-directed exploration of a new topic
- engage deeply and rigorously with primary materials and current “state-of-the-art” research/thinking in the field as applied to a particular topic, and in so doing to gain deeper insight/knowledge of both primary materials and secondary literature
- apply/demonstrate substantive knowledge of the field by applying that knowledge to a narrowly focused topic in original/creative ways.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, most academics I know are far more interested in teaching than in testing. The point of a paper assignment is NOT to test what the student knows. It is to require the student to do some structured intellectual work that advances the student’s skills and knowledge. The evaluative part of that exercise is secondary, at best; and even within the evaluative part, the principal concern is to give the student detailed written feedback with the aim to improve the student’s capacity going forward. It’s ALWAYS harder and more time-consuming to grade papers than to grade exams, because grading papers requires so much more individuation and attention to detail. The only reason a professor would assign a paper in lieu of, or in addition to, an exam is the belief that the paper serves a valuable pedagogical purpose or purposes, like those outlined above. And those pedagogical purposes are utterly defeated by re-submission of old work. That makes re-submission an inherently fraudulent practice.</p>