Self → Genre → Corpus
The online version. Students study their own reading reflections, analyze a digital genre and defend their choices in writing, then research a writing challenge.
Process: Directed draftingFirst draft
- Personal
Online Writing Course Autoethnography
1,000+ words. Data are the weekly reading reflections students already turned in.
- Multimodal
Digital Genre Analysis and Rhetorical Choices Defense
A corpus of 5–10 samples of one digital genre. 1,400–1,500 words or the equivalent, using at least 3 of the 5 modes, plus a 250–500 word written defense.
- Research
Standing Challenges in Academic Writing
1,700+ words. One challenge, one genre, a corpus, 1–2 outside sources in MLA, and a coda.
What carries forward
An online course runs on rails: deadlines and written scaffolding do more of the work that Friday workshops do in person.
The Rhetorical Choices Defense is the hinge. It turns the multimodal project back into written reasoning, which sets up the research paper.
One caution if you borrow this: the genre analysis and the standing-challenges paper use nearly the same method (collect samples, code conventions, report patterns). Make the second one a real step up. Require scholarship, ask students to argue why the genre produces the pattern, or let the Stage 2 corpus feed the Stage 3 question. The conversation version of Standing Challenges, which I built for Fall 2026, takes the first route.
Where I've used it
- First-year writing I · 15 weeks, online · Spring 2026