Nowadays, I don’t get very much in the way of old schoolwork papers to stock up on to use for paper mache projects, so I had to resort to junkmail as an alternative paper source, one that I personally tongue-un-cheek refer to as a “renewable scratch paper source.” Yet, I am still learning new things, despite not being in school. So, let me reflect. What were the sources of old schoolwork papers? Old schoolwork papers can be classified into three big categories:
- Class handouts
- Assignments
- Examination
These large categories can be further broken down as follows.
- Class handouts
- Syllabus
- Slides/notes
- Assignments
- In-class assignments
- Homework assignments
- Writing assignments
- Art projects
- Examination
- Permitted exam notes
- In-class exam
- Take-home test
Particularly noteworthy is that putting these materials on paper is largely an artifact of taking classes in person. If you don’t attend class in person, you can’t get class handouts on paper. Rather, you’ll end up getting PDF documents of class handouts of the class is taken online and the instructor desires to hand out documents similar to printed paper. Likewise, writing assignments are submitted online by means of PDF or word processor document upload. Nowadays, even when a class is taken in person and a hard copy is handed in on paper, there is often times also an electronic submission so that the graders can more easily use automated tools to check for plagiarism.
For homework, if there was a lot of external commercial involvement from companies of the likes such as Pearson or McGraw Hill that went into the curriculum, there may be a proprietary web app that homework is worked inside of. In this case, there is no industry standard data format to contain the details of the homework assignments after the course has ended: the sole purpose is to have the student work through exercises in the short-term and assign a grade. By contrast, if the instructor largely prepares their own curriculum and homework assignments, the electronic submission is typically a PDF, word processor document, or some other industry standard form.
As it turns out, although there is a such thing as some online classes involving art projects, honestly my personal experience is that hardly anyone who has a college-level education ever takes those classes. Most classes that produce art projects of any form as a graded assignment are done so on paper or some other physical medium and are often done only in very early school education. Correspondingly, most early school graded art projects choose to use physical media for ease of use, and graded digital/electronic art projects are typically only part of a middle-school or higher level curriculum. Especially, the more advanced multimedia forms such modular synthesis, 3D computer graphics, professional post-production compositing and effects, and so on ard hardly ever covered by most earlier schools’ course offerings.
Examination is traditionally one of the toughest parts of education to administer, and the challenges likewise extend to online classes. The main concern with examination is preventing cheating, either from consulting unauthorized reference manuals during the exam or by copying identical answers to identical questions from a classmate’s paper during the exam. Sometimes online classes may even resort to special in-person exams in the interest of preventing cheating. Sometimes for in-personal exams, a personally prepared sheet of notes is permitted, in which case this must almost always be done on paper, not an electronic source, again for the interest of preventing cheating by limiting the scope of information available. Therefore, even in a world of largely electronic course-work and education, examination is still a significant source of school paperwork.