Assessment: Beyond the term paper

From Campus Technology:

In designing courses for online environments we have been somewhat successful at scuttling closed-book exams for assessing student learning--largely due to the challenges of monitoring exams. However, we still appear to be stuck in another very entrenched mode of assessing student learning: research papers and project reports.

Why is the traditional paper so prevalent in assessment, and how can we move beyond it to alternative evidence of student learning? And how can we leverage technology and new media in our assessment strategies?

And now, for the rest of the story...