The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the User's Journey

Writing assignments are road maps—or they should be. They guide the writer on a journey. They lay out a process, envision a destination. They are designed. As Jim Burke explains it: “What we are really doing when we create a year’s worth of writing assignments, of experiences, is designing a story. Each day’s class a sentence, each week a paragraph, each unit a chapter in the story of the year students spend in our classes. And as with any good story, there needs to be tension and transform...