Online self-study course

We now offer an online self-study course that is open to everyone! It guides you through the process of building a research paper from scratch.

Take it with a group of peers so you can exchange feedback on your writing. Having parters will also help you keep up momentum.

Why this course

This course is based on our flagship writing course, which has been taught in-person for 10 years and has been taken by hundreds of PhD candidates. The course has travelled to various institutions:

Brown University, Chicago Booth, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Oxford University, Princeton University, Stanford GSB, Stanford University, University of California–Berkeley, University of California–Los Angeles, University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, and Vanderbilt University.

We approach writing in an unorthodox way that students have found helpful, even at institutions with strong writing programs, great placement records, and excellent faculty advising.

How it works

Our online self-study course is hosted on Canvas. Once you are enrolled, you will receive an invitation to create a student account using the email address you register with us. 

Most groups take 3-4 weeks to complete the course, but we give you access for 6 weeks. (For reference, the in-person version of this course is taught over a single week, in which people focus exclusively on it.)

An overview of the course

The course teaches you how to build a research paper from scratch, following the method laid out in our textbook: http://www.econscribe.org/textbook.

You will work on building a paper of your choice in three layers:

  • Layer 1: Articulating an overall argument (aka "the RAP")

  • Layer 2: Building a support structure (aka "the RAP-Outline")

  • Layer 3: Drafting paragraphs in it (aka "the Skeleton Draft") 

You will learn principles for building each layer. Along the way, you will do quizzes to practice with real-world samples. Doing these quizzes will help you sharpen your writing and logic skills. 

Then, you will complete homework assignments. There are 4 homework assignments, and each one gets you to build specific elements of your own draft.

Finally, you will exchange feedback within your peer group on each homework assignment. Getting good feedback from a diverse pool of peers is a critical part of the method. (You can see what others have had to say about the method here.)

Enrollment

If you are ready to take the course, sign up on the right and we will send you further information.