Until recently “academic writing” was primarily understood as a discipline-specific, closed access, single-medium communication produced for a limited audience of academic specialists. In our digital age, however, the concept is being adapted to open-access, electronic channels of communication. In order to prepare Duke’s undergraduate students to be effective writers throughout their educations and beyond Duke, it is critical that we embrace a more expansive idea of academic writing—one that speaks to a broader public and that encompasses digital rhetoric and multimedia in addition to the written word.

Writing in a Digital Age will establish a vertically and horizontally integrated Digital Writing and Pedagogy Lab to be housed in the Thompson Writing Program, with additional support from Duke University Libraries. The three main goals of the Lab will be to: (1) institute curricular innovations in Writing 101; (2) design new courses under Writing 190S (Special Topics); and (3) implement pedagogical innovations in the Thompson Writing Program for integrating digital pedagogy in the writing classroom.