Core modules
3 required
Digital Rhetoric · Designing Digital Projects · Teaching with Digital Tools
Electives
Choose 1 of 4 during the beta
Attention Economy · Ethics · Accessibility · Multimodal Composition
Time commitment
19 to 28 hours
Core modules 4 to 6 hours each, one elective 3 to 4 hours, capstone 4 to 6 hours, over six to eight weeks
Capstone
Digital portfolio assignment or module
Submitted with a design rationale
What this certificate addresses
Digital communication has its own rhetorical strategies. It raises new questions about audience and purpose, and it poses teaching problems that frameworks built for print writing leave partly open. This certificate prepares you to teach digital communication as a disciplinary practice with its own standards of rigor.
The three core modules build one argument about digital rhetoric and AI literacy together. Module 1 sets out rhetorical foundations for digital environments and treats AI systems as platform actors that deserve the same analysis as any other affordance. Module 2 takes up assignment and assessment design, and poses a design problem: where AI tools belong in a course, and on what grounds. Module 3 presents the full Cole (2026) AI literacy framework (opens in a new window) (conceptual, structural, and operative), where the certificate's analysis comes together. The electives then apply that framework to specific domains: the attention economy, digital ethics, accessible design, and multimodal composition. AI literacy runs through the whole sequence. You meet it in each module before Module 3 presents it in full.
Core modules
The required sequence
-
1
Foundations of Digital Rhetoric and Communication
Digital literacy as a rhetorical practice: multimodal rhetoric, networked writing, hypertext, and audience analysis in digital environments. How digital contexts change what communication requires and what it means.
Weeks 1–2 · ~4–6 hours
Open Module 1 workbook -
2
Designing and Assessing Digital Projects
Designing digital assignments with clear learning outcomes, and evaluating student digital projects with rubrics that balance creativity and rigor. What makes a digital project worth doing, and worth assessing with care.
Weeks 3–4 · ~4–6 hours
Open Module 2 workbook -
3
AI Literacy and Critical Digital Practice
The Cole (2026) AI literacy framework (conceptual, structural, and operative) applied to the digital tools you teach with. You leave with a reasoned decision about deploying a tool and a prototype assignment with explicit accountability conditions.
Weeks 5–6 · ~4–6 hours
Open Module 3 workbook
Electives
Choose one of four
Each elective workbook includes content sections, two activities, a branded artifact builder, and a repository opt-in. Progress saves automatically in your browser.
Elective 1
Social Media and the Attention Economy
Algorithmic recommendation systems as AI, platform literacy and platform fluency, and how to teach students to analyze and produce disciplinary content in attention-economy contexts.
About 3 to 4 hours
Open Elective 1 workbookElective 2
Ethical Issues in Digital Communication
Structural analysis of AI systems, distributional harms, and the three-decision operative framework, applied to AI-based academic integrity tools as the central governance case.
About 3 to 4 hours
Open Elective 2 workbookElective 3
Accessibility and Inclusive Design
WCAG technical and communicative accessibility, AI-assisted accessibility tool analysis, and designing assignments that treat accessible communication as a rhetorical criterion.
About 3 to 4 hours
Open Elective 3 workbookElective 4
Multimodal Composition and Digital Narratives
Design decisions as rhetorical choices, structural analysis of generative AI tools, and building a discipline-specific multimodal assignment with mode requirements and design rationale.
About 3 to 4 hours
Open Elective 4 workbookCapstone
Create a digital portfolio assignment or module
Your capstone is a digital assignment or instructional module you design for your own course, submitted with a rationale explaining your design choices, assessment approach, and how the module puts digital rhetoric principles to work. Plan on 4 to 6 hours. CWSP reviews each capstone, then emails your certificate. Open the capstone page.
Questions? Contact Kirsti Cole at CWSP.