Focusing on the case write-up within the Harvard case method of instruction, this study provides historical and empirical evidence for the theory of genre systems. The Harvard case literature and interviews at a case-based business school in the Harvard tradition show that the purpose of this largely ignored written genre is to prepare students to participate in the primary genre, oral classroom discussion of the case. The case genre system provides highly conventionalized conductor-choreographer roles for instructors and blunt, detached consultant roles for student writers/speakers who repeatedly enact decisive, adversarial personae affirming practices and values of the business school.

An assessment system for collaborative-writing projects helps create a positive learning experience for all group members by rewarding each individual for his or her participation. Unlike assessment systems that evaluate only the group product, the system proposed here balances product and process, the lat ter embracing individual skills at interacting and contributions to the collaborative composing. The results of a systematic study of students' atti tudes toward their classroom experiences seem to corroborate our perspective as practitioners: With this assessment system, group members felt that they participated fully and practiced effective interactional behaviors, that they be came involved in the collaborative-writing process, and that the reward system was fairer than a single group grade.