Sample Assignments

Wikipedia Edit

Wikipedia’s open-access feature gives every registered user the opportunity to edit its entries. For this project, students will expand a start-class Wikipedia article about an underrepresented social group, evaluating and documenting sources to enhance the credibility and richness of the article. The purposes of this assignment are to help students gain awareness of informative genres of writing, and to let them critically address Wikipedia’s information gaps.

Researched Argument

A researched argument is the kind of work in which the author presents an argument and back it up with credible sources to persuade the audience. For this assignment, students will create a researched argument that not only demonstrates a interesting and meaningful social problem tied to their community, but also provides a possible solution to that problem. The purposes of the assignment are to build students’ curiosity as student researchers, and to connect their research with social issues in public spheres.

Multimodal Campaign

This assignment challenges students to design a multimodal campaign in response to a social problem tied to their community. They will produce a nonprofit website that consists of a logo, a mission statement, an animated advertisement, and a brochure. They will have a group presentation of their campaign and write an artist’s statement explaining the composition and design choices they have made. The purposes of this assignment are to enhance students’ skills in multimodal writing, and to sustain students’ growth as socially responsible writer-designers.