The Handwritten, AI-Proof, Scaffolded Term Paper
An Overview for Implementation
Over the last six months or so, I’ve had hundreds of people reach out to me—mostly via email and LinkedIn—asking for reviewer copies of my Drafted workbook, asking how I scaffold writing in my classes, or wondering how they might adapt aspects of this assignment for their own courses.
These are conversations I actually want to be having. But managing them one-off, through emails and DMs, has proven insufficient—both for me and for the level of detail these questions deserve.
So, I’m using this Substack to do two things in regard to the interest:
Spell out, clearly and publicly, how I manage a semester-long scaffolded term paper in my classes.
Create a more permanent place where conversations among those interested in adopting similar approaches can live—both in the comments and, eventually, in subscriber chats (I’m only a week old!).
I’ve been using versions of this scaffold for several years now in my in-person introductory philosophy and ethics courses, and I’ve written about this approach in a peer-reviewed article for Teaching Philosophy (unfortunately behind a paywall).
What follows is the general framework I use. Think of this post as an order of operations: the chronological structure of the assignment across the semester.
In a follow-up post for paid subscribers, I’ll walk through each stage in much more detail: how I structure the in-class activities, the exact prompts I use, and digital downloads of the analog activities, so others can adapt this model for their own classrooms if they wish. Below you will simply find the no-frills steps I use as in-class writing exercises to save the term paper and AI-proof it.
See my essay in Inside Higher Ed if you need convincing of why it’s worth saving in the first place.
The Scaffolded Paper: An Order of Operations
Step 1: Research Comes First
The first thing I have students do is research. Some instructors disagree with putting this step first, so let me explain why I do.
I want students to engage with the secondary academic literature early. I want them to see—quickly—that the problems they are being asked to address are far more complicated than they initially assume. There is no better place to come to that realization than having them sift through and see the hundreds of articles debating some thing they thought was obvious.
This stage is stretched over about two weeks. I ask students to find relevant academic papers to the prompt they pick, print them out, and annotate them by hand—underlining, writing in the margins, making notes. This is all before class.
In class, we work through one article per meeting. Students are given roughly 30–45 minutes to explain the argument: what the author is claiming and how they argue for it. At this stage, the task is not critique. It is disciplined understanding.
Step 2: Constructing the Problem Statement
Next, students construct a problem statement.
Here, I ask them to explain:
what is at stake in answering the question one way rather than another,
what dominant views they’ve encountered in the literature,
and what significant questions still need to be explored in order to answer the prompt well.
I usually give about 45 minutes of in-class time for this and ask for roughly two solid paragraphs. I also encourage students to take a few minutes thinking through the problem before they start writing anything down.
Step 3: Developing the Thesis Statement
The third step is the thesis statement.
Students must pin down the position they want to defend and I require them to do that brainstorming in class too. No tech assistance.
First, they write an initial thesis. Then, they exchange thesis statements with someone in their small group (I’ll explain how I structure small groups in another post). Finally, they revise the thesis so that it is clearer, more precise, and stronger.
This step forces commitment. Students can’t stay vague for long.
Step 4: Outlining the Argument
Once the thesis is in place, students outline their argument.
They do this by completing an argument map. I provide a visual infographic that requires them to identify:
the premises of their argument,
and the evidence they will use to show those premises are true.
This makes the structure of their reasoning explicit—and gaps become obvious very quickly. They have to literally fill in the infographic by hand and write it out on the page.
Step 5: Anticipating Objections
Next, students anticipate objections.
They identify two plausible objections that could be raised against their argument and then write responses to those objections. This is often the stage where students realize whether their position is actually defensible. Sometimes this means going back and fixing their argument.
Step 6: In-Class Drafting
Only after all of this do I ask students to draft.
I give them a page limit (usually four pages) and nearly an entire class period to write as much as they can. The goal here is not polish. It’s integration—bringing together research, structure, and reasoning in prose.
Step 7: Targeted Peer Review
Peer review comes next—but not the usual kind.
Rather than simply exchanging papers and offering general feedback, I ask students to identify specific pain points in their own draft—places where they feel stuck or dissatisfied. They give those pain points to their reviewer, who then offers targeted feedback aimed at addressing them.
In addition, reviewers score the paper on five separate metrics, each on a scale from 1 to 10, and justify each score. This helps students develop evaluative judgment rather than vague reactions.
Final Step: The In-Class Final Paper
The final paper is written in class as the final exam.
Students are allowed to use all prior components—the research notes, problem statement, thesis drafts, argument map, objections, and peer feedback. What they are not allowed to outsource is the thinking.
I have literally created a workbook for students to complete all these steps in; it helps tremendously. Everything is in one place, there are not hundreds of blank pages where things can be hidden and done in advance, etc. You can find it here.
A Note on the Classroom Conditions That Make This Work
A few design choices matter here.
Cadence.
First, my class meets twice per week, and I reserve a significant portion of one meeting—usually Thursdays—for in-class writing. I don’t always use the entire class period, but writing is a predictable and normal part of our time together. It isn’t an add-on or something students are expected to manage entirely on their own.
Community.
Second, students are placed in small groups that stay together for the entire semester. One reason for this is simple: peer review works better when students build rapport and trust. When students know and like the people they’re working with, they give better feedback and are more willing to receive it. Students consistently report higher engagement and better outcomes because of this continuity.
Concepts.
Finally, I give students a carefully constrained range of prompts at the beginning of the semester. Because I teach philosophy and ethics, the prompts require students to answer a specific question in the affirmative or the negative. The prompts are tied to the central threads of the course and to material we cover early on. I avoid giving students the option to write on topics we won’t reach until the final weeks of the semester—for obvious reasons.
In future posts, I’ll unpack each stage in more detail, including the specific prompts and materials I use and how others might adapt them for their own classrooms.
If you know a colleague struggling with how to teach any writing intensive course, please share with them!
It is possible to teaching writing well in this moment. I hope this shows you a path forward. I’ll also be explaining how I adapt a similar method in a Critical Thinking course that I’ll be teaching for 90 students, in person, this Spring. This class uses Problem Based Learning, very similar to Case Method.
Would love to hear your thoughts, if you do something similar, or how this could be adapted for your specific course needs. Let’s chat.
I am following your posts closely, because I have assigned the Drafted workbook to my Advanced Composition students --- will take all the advice you offer!