The skeleton of an essay including arguments, main points, and conclusions. Students demonstrate their preparation, planning and reading on the topic instead of having to write a full essay.
Advantages & Challenges
Advantages
Challenges
Advantages
Essay plans can help assess much of what an essay could without the detail and extended timeframe.
It could be written in a list format or include another format such as a spider diagram or concept map.
Helps students to structure essays and identify what are the key elements needed for a strong essay.
As it is not as time consuming as an essay students could plan for multiple essays covering a range of topics which in turn can cover more of the module content.
Challenges
Plans for essays, just like the full essays, can be checked for plagiarism using tools like Turnitin.
Generative AI is highly skilled at creating essay plans based on prompts, including specific instructions and feedback. It can assist students in generating ideas, giving examples, summarising literature, and providing nuanced support.
Viewing essay plans as tools for thinking and learning, focusing on their formative function, can reduce concerns about AI and academic integrity. Presenting essay plans as valuable tools for generating constructive feedback helps students produce their best work and promotes academic honesty.
Tips for Use
Provide students with guidance on how to structure their essay plan effectively.
Essay plan can be used as a formative assessment tool to provide feedback to students before they begin writing the full essay. Review students’ essay plans to assess the coherence of their arguments, relevance of their evidence, and clarity of their structure.
Clearly communicate the criteria by which the essay plan will be evaluated, such as clarity of argument, depth of analysis, and links to academic literature.
Use grading rubrics to assess students’ essay plans.
