With the revised IP students are explicitly allowed, encouraged even, to submit course work that is not done in the traditional essay format. The key question you need to ask yourself when reviewing is: "Does the student understand the content?"

The content can be demonstrated in many ways. They may still choose to write a traditional essay, but some other examples of the forms their submission may take are (but are not limited to):

• an audio recording of themselves answering the questions, with or without someone interviewing them
• a video of them demonstrating how to do something, or verbally explaining their answer
• a website they've created that includes written answers, pictures, and links
• a slide show answering the questions

While the student can submit in many forms, they do still need to be clear in their answers. You should not have to go digging to find the point of their response, and may still request revisions if they go off on too many tangents. Keep in mind, however, that the IP is about learning and personal exploration. We want students to gain the base knowledge they need to, but also be able to explore in more depth those things that truly interest them.

The revised program, while still very scholarly, is more interested in a student learning than it is about penalizing them for formatting errors. So, the key question you need to ask yourself when checking citations is: "Can I successfully find where the student got their information?"

Students are still able to create citations in a traditional MLA format (or other scholarly format , such as APA or Chicago) and submit them as a works cited page along with whatever form of submission they choose to make. However, they may also cite their sources in less standard ways that may reflect the format in which they submitted their work, such as spoken acknowledgement.

A student must say where they got their information:

• when they use it in their submission. This may be a traditional in-line citation, or it may simply be an additional sentence/note that "I found this information from X place/person".
• in a way that you can successfully validate their source. This may be in a formal works cited page, but may also be done by providing you with the name of the author and a link to the place they got their information. If it is a book, they still need to tell you what pages they found that information on.

For all of the official recommended resources, students can find the MLA formatting of those sources directly on the official Exit Standards course page. If they are having difficulty citing, you can always direct them to copy and paste those citations.

Coming back to the idea that you are checking to make sure the student understands the content, that means that the key question you need to ask yourself regarding things like grammar, spelling, and other technical writing details is: "Do any errors detract from the meaning or make the submission unreasonably difficult to understand?"

This means that when a student submits their work you should be able to understand their meaning without much trouble. Things you may wish to request revisions to their submission for:

• Spelling errors make a word unrecognizable or change the meaning of the sentence
• Grammar that makes it hard to identify the point of a sentence or paragraph
• Tangents that skirt the question, or go so far afield that the student may have missed the point of the question. This may also include excessive run on sentences or paragraphs.

Please keep in mind that while we have high expectations for understanding, many of our students may not have an advanced degree or may not speak English as their native language. These are not things we should penalize them for.