The letter of recommendation (LOR) plays a significant role in the application process for many professional positions, offering descriptive rather than quantitative information from a third party about an individual’s potential fit within the hiring organization. Such letters, however, increasingly appear online, emphasizing existing problems within the genre and creating others involving trust, reliability, and confidentiality. Typically, the response has been that such digitization of the LOR minimizes its significance or standardizes it. This article analyzes the digital LOR genre as an exemplar of epideictic rhetoric situated within a Perelmanian framework and demonstrates how the digital LOR operates rhetorically, enhancing the adherence between candidate, writer, audience, and institutional values and providing a means of evaluating candidate fit. The article also offers a rhetorical heuristic that captures how audiences can more fruitfully read the epideictic, digital LOR, thereby demonstrating how to optimize the digital platform’s benefits and still use the LOR to its best rhetorical advantage.

This article reports on the current status of client projects (CPs) in business communication courses, provides a scaffolded model for implementing CP, and assesses student learning in CPs. Using a longitudinal mixed method research design, survey data and qualitative materials from six semesters are presented. The instructor survey indicated need for a model for CPs, assistance identifying community partners, and advice on tailoring CPs to course objectives, all of which are provided here. Results from assessing the model’s application indicate that students expressed higher levels of confidence as communicators and felt better prepared to engage in workplace communication.

This case study examines written peer response materials generated by small groups with varying gender compositions. Based on those observations, I offer several pedagogical implications.