Digital Academic Narrative

The full title on the sheet is “A Multimodal Co-Authored Essay.” It’s the second project in Pathway A, and it’s built directly on the first: groups take the data from their autoethnographies and make something new with it in other modes.

What groups make

• Groups of 3–5, ideally the same workshop groups from the autoethnography, so everyone has already read each other’s papers.
• A digital essay that compares and reports on the group’s reading and writing processes. Or a story: an invented character, or characters, who carry the qualities or problems the group shares.
• A form that isn’t a slide deck: a short film or video, a webpage, an infographic, a digital collage, or a comic or graphic novel chapter. Anything else gets cleared with me first. PowerPoint can be a rough draft but not the final piece, after too many phoned-in decks.
• All five modes. Language has to show up somewhere, but the project can’t rely on it. The point is what the visual, aural, gestural, and spatial modes can do.

Comparing the data

Questions from the sheet to get groups started:

• Were there similarities or differences in the environments you chose for gathering your data?
• Were there similarities in the issues you uncovered about your writing, reading, or meaning-making habits?
• Did anyone do something differently that the rest of the group would like to try for their next paper?
• Were there positives in common across your processes?
• What modes of communication did you use while gathering and analyzing your autoethnography data?

One guardrail: compare what the autoethnographies found, not how the group is getting along right now. Group dynamics can be a subject for the third project.

Presentations

Each group presents before the third project starts: 5–7 minutes in an 8-week session, 5–10 in a 15-week course. The job is to frame the work, not read it aloud or let the video play. Groups explain how they used each of the five modes, show the portions of the project that make those choices visible, and decide ahead of time who talks and who drives the technology.

The handout gives students my three reasons for presenting:

1. People write together to get things done. That’s most of what writing at work looks like.
2. “The digital equivalent” of 1,250 words is subjective. Hearing how a group meant to use the modes tells me whether they put in as much work as a traditional paper would take.
3. It helps me grade faster.

Why it’s here

The sheet tells students that many writings start off in one form and end up in another. This project is that idea in practice: the autoethnography data carry into a new form, for a new audience, written with other people. Students can keep revising both projects through the final portfolio. The sheet suggests doing it once the third unit shows them what they’d change, and checking with the group first, since the essay is co-authored.

How it runs

In a 15-week course, the draft is due in Week 9, ready to work on in class, and the revision at the end of Week 10. One member submits for the group. In an 8-week session, the draft is due in Week 4, the revision at the end of Week 5, and presentations happen in Week 6.

An earlier version

In Fall 2025 this was a “Digital Story” built on literacy narratives instead of autoethnographies. I adapted it from the literacy narrative assignment in Writing About Writing (pp. 346–348), and the current version grew out of it. Groups of 2–3 wrote a project proposal, used course readings plus 3–4 outside sources, and aimed for the digital equivalent of about 4–7 pages. PowerPoint was allowed then.

One piece from it is worth borrowing for any group project: after the revision, each student wrote a confidential self- and team evaluation of about 500 words. It asked how the group worked together, whether everyone contributed equally, when and how the work got done, and whether the student pulled their own weight.