This course is part of ASU's Professional Writing MicroBachelors program. If you complete the two courses that are part of this program with a passing grade, you can earn transferable credit from one of edX's university credit partners. During the course, you will complete several major writing projects, keep a regular writer's journal, and maintain a writer's website, where you will showcase your work and demonstrate what you have learned. If you wish to earn university credit, we will ask you to complete all assignments. This writing course introduces students to discourse, research, and research writing for the purpose of proposing solutions to problems. Rather than learning about these subjects in the abstract, students will learn by engaging with local problems and issues in their communities. To achieve this, students will learn how to: develop an actionable central research question; propose a research project; conduct primary and secondary research; compose an action-oriented research project for web publication; and design an academic poster project for research sharing. By engaging with local questions and problems, students will have the opportunity to enter into important discussions and possibly create meaningful changes in the lives of those around them. Students will create a digital portfolio that enables them to publish and share their research and writing. This course will interest individuals who want to learn more about how to create change in the world through research and writing. It will also interest those who want to learn how to compose for a digital medium.