Higher education · Course design case study
Introduction to
Academic Writing.
A connected course experience where learners read critically, develop ideas, adapt their writing, and revise with purpose.
Audience
First-year undergraduates
Structure
15 weeks · 3 credits
Delivery design
Online · Cohort based
My role
Curriculum, learning & assessment design
The design challenge
Help writers make
intentional choices.
Writing development asks learners to do more than follow a formula. They need to interpret texts, explore ideas, consider readers, and use feedback to strengthen their work.
The blueprint connects four competencies to practice and a continuous Academic Writing Portfolio, making both the work and the thinking behind it visible.
Available evidence: the complete course blueprint and a built audience-analysis lesson sample. The sample shows one part of the intended learner experience, not a deployed LMS course.
The learner journey
One course. A developing body of work.
Writing as Human Communication
Read, question, interpret, and respond to authentic texts.
Writing to Discover Ideas
Use writing to explore a direction, develop claims, and organize ideas.
Writing to Communicate
Adapt a message for its audience, purpose, and context.
Writing to Create & Transform
Develop drafts and use feedback to make substantive changes.
Writing to Refine & Curate
Select evidence of growth and explain the decisions behind the work.
A design decision worth seeing
Assessment follows
the work of writing.
Make the Thinking Visible
Artifacts and rationales reveal how learners interpret, develop, and communicate ideas.
Build in a Second Look
Feedback and revision become part of the learning process, rather than the end of a grading cycle.
Look Across the Portfolio
Curated evidence brings together competency, range, reflection, and growth.
Try a learning moment
Same message. Different reader.
This website demonstration is inspired by Section 3’s audience-adaptation work. Select a reader and notice what changes in the message.
Would you read my introduction and tell me where you lose track of my point? I’m trying to make the main idea clearer.
For a peer: a conversational tone and a specific request make the feedback task approachable.
Reflection: What changed besides the vocabulary? What would this reader need to know?
Built lesson sample · Section 3.1
Who is the reader?
Compare two original practice texts, analyze an audience, adapt a passage, and explain the choices you made. The sample follows the blueprint’s sequence from recognizing audience clues to revising for a new reader.
Evidence & capabilities
See the architecture behind the experience.
The source blueprint documents course vision, competency alignment, learning sequence, assessment tasks, rubrics, and governance, with UDL and WCAG 2.2 AA as design targets.