Coursework, which is also called and often referred to as Course paper or Report paper, has become a very popular and effective way of teaching and evaluating students in colleges and universities today. Essays are, of course, much more popular and will remain so for a long time. But a coursework is a good alternative for teachers (professors) and students to consider for students’ development.
The key difference between a coursework and an essay is that the coursework is longer, involves more research and provides more detailed information and evidence on the subject.
Unlike the essay a course paper is almost always based on practice and does not involve much theoretical data. That is why it always requires sufficient research, profound data analysis and a lot of visual aids on the company or any other subject of the research.
Courseworks are written in a number of disciplines and almost in any college despite of student’s major or academic level. Sophomores and juniors have just as much chances to get a course paper to accomplish as seniors and masters. But the difficulty of these papers of course is really different. The disciplines that involve writing report papers are business, physics, engineering, philosophy, astronomy, literature, statistics, mathematics, biology and others. And because of this wide variety of the subjects involved the demand for help in writing course projects has dramatically increased in the past several years.
A coursework is a paper which includes the material studied over the entire course of the subject. Therefore it is a very effective method of studying and teaching and has a number of positive effects on students:
- students tend to attend classes more in order to get a good grade for their course work;
- students that write course projects gain good research and analytical skills;
- for many students courseworks give a chance to take a closer look at the subject from practical side and in such way make them more curious and motivated;
- courseworks stimulate personal development and improve critical thinking of students;
- reports teach students to be more formal and professional in their writings which is really good for their further career;
- courseworks contribute to students’ engagement with the discipline and give them an ability to compare practice with theoretical arguments;
As it was mentioned above the courseworks involve a lot of visual aids and supportive materials such as charts, graphs, photos which make the paper more persuasive and more accessible for reader to understand.
Courseworks became a very important part of education all over the world today; especially they are popular in post-Soviet countries and are becoming more popular in countries like US and many European countries. It should be understandable for professors that using this kind of evaluation in colleges is a very good practice for students to express their knowledge in a bit different way and therefore improve themselves and extend professors’ view on traditional system of education.
