Field Notes → Ethnography → Presentation
Professional writing, research first. Weekly field notes lead into an interview-based ethnography of a workplace writing culture, and the multimodal presentation comes last.
Process: Directed draftingFirst draft
- Personal
Field Notes and workplace writing exercises
Weekly discussion posts, plus in-class work like freewriting about a workplace writing task, drafting a memo, and turning raw notes into a one-page report.
- Research
Writing Culture Ethnography
Interview a specific culture of writers ("first-year paralegals," not "legal professionals") and report in 1,500+ words with APA citations.
- Multimodal
Digital Presentation of a Professional Culture
A visual artifact (slides, infographic, or video) presented live, 8–10 minutes, or 1,800+ words in writing.
What carries forward
This is the only pathway where the research comes before the multimodal piece. Students translate what they learned in their interviews into something visual for an audience of peers.
The Field Notes do the connecting. Each weekly post is a step toward the next project, not a standalone reflection:
- A workplace document you’ve encountered, and what made it work or not.
- Sketch your interview subject or professional culture, with 2–3 planned interview questions.
- Reflect on your interview and the patterns you’re starting to code.
- Name the professional culture you’re choosing for the presentation and why it fits a visual treatment.
- What conventions do you notice in that culture, seen “from the inside”? (Hancock’s genre analysis is the model.)
- Reflect on rehearsal feedback: what’s changing in your presentation because of what peers said?
Initial posts are due Sunday night and peer replies before Wednesday’s class. A final post in Week 8 asks what students learned about professional writing conventions.
Where I've used it
- Introduction to professional writing · 8 weeks, hybrid · Fall 2026