Helping students become independent and discerning writers of specialized genres – in the disciplines, science, industry or the professions – requires implementing a writing pedagogy that engages them in long-term learning while offering support as they work through what it means to express themselves effectively in particular contexts through writing. One approach to address such concerns is genre-based writing pedagogy,[2, 5] which adopts the viewpoint that genres are staged and goal-oriented, and have momentarily stabilized language and rhetorical patterns.[10] These patterns are recognizable by an interpretive community who draw on shared understandings of sociocultural context as well as communicative form, function and action. Genre pedagogy seeks to operationalize research-based observations about such elements to help students gain competence in specialized writing more quickly. [1, 7, 12-13] Today’s widespread digitalization of specialized communication practices, however, poses a number of theoretical and practical challenges to genre pedagogy. Digitally-mediated genres are often multimodal by nature, combining visual design elements (color, typography, space) with images, hypertext and embedded videos with audio, in addition to language. [14] Furthermore, they may not adhere to staged, linear reading paths like more traditional, ‘monomodal’ genres.[3, 11] Likewise, rather than occurring solely through language, a given genre stage may be realized alternatively in different modes; conversely, the realization of a genre stage can also be multimodal. In this regard, a typical genre-based approach consisting of identifying language and discourse-based stages to familiarize learners with digitally-mediated genres may be less helpful because meaning in such genres often emerges across multiple modes simultaneously. [4, 6, 8] In response to these challenges, this study describes the modifications made to an existing genre-based approach designed for a graduate-level EMI technical communication program. Focusing specifically on teaching instructional video-tutorial design, it evaluates the modified pedagogy’s effectiveness in helping graduate students develop the ability to think critically about sociorhetorical workplace expectations and professional genre production in English. Modifications to the approach include 1) devising a genre-specific, research-based multimodal rubric for instructional video-tutorials and 2) building critical pedagogical actions (CPAs) around the rubric. To assess the modifications’ combined effectiveness in helping participants (n=4) become critical and discerning producers of instructional video-tutorials, discourse-based evidence for growth in their ability to critically assess their own instructional video-tutorial productions was sought. Five data sets were extracted from the CPAs and compiled into a text-based corpus, including audio transcripts from three focus group discussions, two oral defenses, and four written self-reflection essays. The text-based corpus was coded for explicit comments referring to the modal competency criteria described in the multimodal rubric. Using a content analysis approach, coding of comments (n=180) was carried out independently by two researchers (IRR 82%).[9] Quantitative changes in participants’ critical reflection were identified over the five data sets regarding number of comments made and the mode to which the comments referred: linguistic, aural (narration, sound & music), aural (L2 spoken language), visual-spatial, and time. To further account for the quantitative findings, a fine-grained qualitative analysis was conducted, targeting specific discourse-based evidence of participants’ increasing ability to critically assess their own instructional video-tutorial productions using specialized concepts and terminology. In conclusion, the multimodal rubric appears more effective in guiding students’ emerging genre understanding than a stepped, language-centered model of genre production. Additionally, embedding the rubric within specific CPAs allowed students to assess the genre features of existing video-tutorials, compare and contrast their assessments with that of professional video designers, and evaluate the appropriateness of their assessments before producing their own video-tutorials using the multimodal rubric as a guide. Nonetheless, the small number of study participants, while allowing for detailed descriptions of individual learning trajectories, limits finding generalizability. Data set heterogeneity (written vs. oral, various summative evaluation contexts) is another limitation. Future research will extend the study scope while involving domain professionals directly in assessing student productions as an additional CPA. Cited references [1] Artemeva, N., Myles, D. (2015). Perceptions of prior genre knowledge: A case of incipient biliterate writers in the EAP classroom. In G. Dowd, N. Rulyova (Eds.), Genre Trajectories: Identifying, Mapping, Projecting (pp. 225–245). Palgrave Macmillan. [2] Bawarshi, A.S., Reiff, M.J. (2010). Genre: An Introduction to Theory, Research and Pedagogy. Parlor Press. [3] Bhatia, V.K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. Longman. [4] Cope, B., Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Routledge. [5] Hyon, S. (1996). Genre in three traditions: Implications for ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 30, 693-722. [6] Jewitt, C. (Ed.). (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, 2nd edition. Routledge. [7] Johns, A.M. (2015). Students as genre scholars: ESL/EFL classroom approaches. In Artemeva, N., A. Freedman (Eds.), Genre Studies Around the Globe: Beyond the Three Traditions (pp. 364-385). Inkshed. [8] Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. Routledge. [9] Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis (2nd Edition). Sage. [10] Schryer, C. (1993). Records as genre. Written Communication, 10, 200–234. [11] Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press. [12] Swales, J.M. (2009) Worlds of genre – Metaphors of genre. In C. Bazerman, A. Bonini, D. Figueiredo (Eds.), Genre in a Changing World (pp. 3-16). Parlor Press. [13] Tardy, C. (2009). Building Genre Knowledge. Parlor Press. van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Multimodality, genre and design. In R. H. Jones & S. Norris (Eds.), Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis (pp. 73–93). Routledge.