Alternative to the essay to promote greater depth of learning

The traditional form of assessment using an essay can encourage students to adopt a surface approach to learning. With the growth of the Internet, a number of students commit plagiarism in generation of the essay. So what are students learning? We academics hope to inspire learning, encourage a deep level learning of a subject. There is a need for alternative methods of assessment that promote deep learning. This paper will present the results of and analysis of an assessment method that requires the students to understand a topic area and therefore test the hypothesis that deep learning of a subject is achieved. The assessment task reported here requires the students to comprehensively research a subject area of a module and prepare 5 multi-choice or match questions to be used in a sample phase test for their peers.