What is a "naked essay"?

OK, perhaps the expression is a bit alarming but it is not so bad. I offered this course every couple of years and each year I would be alarmed at the attitude students (non-Christian and more alarmingly Christian) towards plagiarism. Some would simply claim that taking words directly from a source was OK as long as you referenced it so it didn't look like you were hiding something! So last year I gave up trying to keep Christian students in the fourth year of their degree at a Christian University from actively plagiarizing their sources.

The result was the naked essay. You will have the better part of two months to read sources on your topic and think about the concepts and how different sources deal with the same concepts. You will write an annotated bibliography that lists your sources and gives a short paragraph or quote from each source. Then, on a Friday afternoon you and your classmates will go into the computer lab with nothing ("naked" you might say). I will give you your annotated bibliography and you will have three hours to write your essay on one of the computers. The computers will be set up to automatically save to a disk every five minutes so you will not lose what you have written. When you are done you will simply submit the disk and your annotated bibliography and that will be your essay.

Yes, it is still possible to cheat and plagiarize but only if you are an evil genius and evil geniuses can't be stopped from being evil anyway. This will take all forms of unintentional academic dishonesty, improper documentation and plagiarism off the table for most students.

Yes, it also means that students that can touch type will have an advantage in the number of words that they can type in three hours. But the final mark is not linked to the number of words but the quality of the thought. Students that type more slowly will just have to write better. The average word count last year was over 1500. And let's face it most student actually write their essays while sleep deprived the night before it is due anyway. I am just sort of formalizing the last minute push.