To complete the course, students were responsible for completing at least one individual project and one collaborative project, as well as using research methods from at least two of the three research traditions. Within the research plan, students had to lay out their plans in great detail. For example, if students were interested in conducting a study in which they surveyed players in the game, they had to outline where and when they would conduct the survey, determine how many people they would survey and what the purpose was behind the questions in the survey, create a timeline for conducting the survey, and, finally, submit the questions for the survey. Within the genre analysis, students had to identify the disciplinary audience for their chosen article as well as analyze how the research question was stated and how the methods, results, and conclusion were rhetorically organized and constructed in order to be rhetorically effective for that particular disciplinary audience.
Because of the social nature of the WoW, most of the projects ended up being qualitative and/or quantitative, social-science-based research. For example, one student completed a project in which he observed and then quantifiably measured which race in the game received the most gold through begging, discovering that it was the gnome race. Another project used in-game interviews to discover the religious beliefs of players from both the horde and the alliance--the two competing factions in the game--and then compared them. Others have used online surveys posted in forums outside of the game to determine what music, if any, players listen to while they play.