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Coursework refers to work carried out by students at university or middle / high school that contributes towards their overall grade, but which is assessed separately from their final exams. Coursework can, for example, take the form of experimental work, or may involve research in the sciences. It can comprise dissertations, book reports or essays submitted for arts subjects.

In universities, coursework is often one of many different modes of assessment. Students are required to produce coursework in order to broaden knowledge and enhance research skills, and to demonstrate that they can discuss, reason and construct practical outcomes from the theoretical knowledge learned during their course. Sometimes coursework is tackled by a group, so students may learn both how to work in groups and from each other. But in recent times, plagiarism and copying have been major issues to contend with.

There has been some controversy regarding the help students can receive whilst doing their coursework, abuse of which may lead to the disqualification of students at different levels - in the UK, the Joint Council for Qualifications can disqualify plagiarism. Easily accessible websites, have given people the opportunity to "lift" ideas and even complete essays, despite the greater protective measures employed to detect this. While coursework may give learners the chance to improve their grades, it also provides an opportunity to 'cheat the system'. This is one of the reasons, amongst others, that in the UK coursework is gradually being removed from the GCSE course, and instead being replaced by a system where all of the grade comes from a "final exam".

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• book report
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• Answering Coursework Questions: Glossary of Task Words