Bump Halbritter, an instructor at Stanford, gave a presentation at the Computers and Writing Conference that I want to remember. He talked about his assignment sequence as “Complexity via Simplification.” He begins with a traditional research essay, and then has students move to a simplified version for a non-academic audience. At this second stage, they could produce a comic strip, character icons, collage, etc. For the last version students produce a power-point for a class presentation.

I forget the program the Collin, Clancy, Derek, and others were using to do the comic strips a while back, but I think students could use that program for the second version.

This sequence seems like it would be really effective. It would enable students to continue working with their research and present it in different ways for different audiences. It also keeps the focus on writing with computers and the different types of texts that students can produce. I’d like to think more about this and consider how I might try something like this at some point.