Lynn Reynolds, a student and ‘Writing Mentor’ at London Metropolitan University is attempting to write an essay online over the next 3 weeks at http://evolvingessay.pbwiki.com/ Lynn writes:

The prospect of tackling an academic assignment is often daunting and anxiety-provoking, even for students who already know a lot about the topic in question. Being given model essays and model answers can actually make the problem worse; it often seems as though the writers managed to produce perfectly coherent, fully-formed arguments from thin air. “That never happens to me,” we think, and already we have that sinking sensation of failure. Model essays just make us feel inadequate. We don’t know where to start. And what’s more, even if we do get going, how do we know if we’re on the right track with the content of our assignment?

This experiment aims to shine a light into all of these dark corners.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops… Lynn is also blogging her experience