Pathway A

Self → Group → Conversation

Students study their own reading and writing, compare what they found in a group multimodal piece, then research a writing challenge in the scholarship, using their own data and their group experience as evidence.

First-year writing I · 15 weeks, in person; also run as an 8-week session

Process: Directed draftingFirst draft

  1. Personal

    Autoethnography

    1,000+ words. Data are the student's own reading and writing artifacts.

  2. Multimodal

    Digital Academic Narrative

    Groups of 3–5 compare their autoethnographies and make a co-authored digital essay. 1,250+ words or the equivalent; no PowerPoint as the final piece.

  3. Research

    Standing Challenges in Writing

    A writing problem that keeps showing up, researched in the scholarship, with the student's autoethnography data and group experience as evidence. 1,250+ words in 15 weeks; 1,000+ in 8.

What carries forward

Stage 1 to Stage 2 is the tightest link in any of my pathways: the group project is built directly on the autoethnography data. Groups compare their processes, not their current group dynamics, and make a short film, webpage, infographic, digital collage, or comic about what they found.

Stage 3 draws on both earlier projects. Students cite their own autoethnography data, and they finally write about their group’s dynamics, which the narrative sheet told them to save for the third project. So every stage feeds the next, and the last one gathers everything. In the 15-week version, four discussion boards also connect the units: edited freewriting, meaning-making, challenges in academic writing, and writing a thesis before versus after the draft.

Students can keep revising earlier projects through the final portfolio, and the sheets suggest they do it after the next unit teaches them something.

Where I've used it

  • First-year writing I · 15 weeks, in person · Fall 2026
  • College writing workshop · 8 weeks · Fall 2026