Collaborative or team writing is the process of producing a written work as a group where all team members contributed to the content and the decisions about how the group will function. Group assignments can be difficult for many students with busy schedules because they require planning, coordination, and frequent communication with other students. However, teachers nonetheless view group work as good preparation for the types of complex assignments students are likely to receive in workplace settings. Also, collaborative assignments offer students the benefits and experience of building on existing knowledge through the dynamic interplay with and among other students, the subject matter, and you, the teacher. With careful coordination and communication, group writing assignments can yield excellent results and valuable experiences.
7 Things You Should Know About Collaborative Editing
Why Collaborate?
- Collaboration helps students understand writing as a public, communal act, rather than as a private, isolated one. Many students write papers that make sense to them but that aren’t clear or persuasive for others. Peer reviewers help students to understand that they aren’t writing for themselves, but for readers.
- Collaboration therefore helps student writers to develop a sense of audience. Too often students write only to please their instructors, whose expectations they rarely understand. Knowing that their peers will read their papers gives students a concrete sense of to whom they are writing, and why.
- Collaboration helps students to better understand the conventions of academic discourse. When talking about their papers with their peers, students will learn where their readers stumble. They can also find out why. Often, these conversations lead to a better understanding of the writing conventions that the student writer has neglected or misunderstood.
- Collaboration helps students realize that academic conventions are not simply arbitrary rules, but in fact reflect readers’ expectations. If student writers want to be understood by an academic audience, they must heed the conventions of academic writing.
- Collaboration gives students practice in analyzing writing. It is easier to see where a classmate’s writing is going awry than it is to find flaws in one’s own prose. It is also easier to critique student writing than it is to analyze the published writing that instructors often give their students as models.
- Collaboration encourages students to talk about their writing. In peer review sessions, students have to field questions about their writing. They have to explain and sometimes defend their writing strategies.
- Collaboration helps students to understand writing as a process, and to increase their sense of mastery of what is often a complex and difficult task. The best way to learn something is to teach it. When instructing their peers, students learn how to improve their own prose.
- Potential Uses
- Pros and Cons
- Tools
- Collaborative groups draw upon the strengths of all their members. Although one student may be stronger in critical thinking skills, another may excel in organizing. By working in groups, students learn from each other while they complete assigned tasks.
- More and more workplace activities involve project teams. Giving students opportunities to work collaboratively on academic projects can help prepare them for the advantages and pitfalls of collaborative work on the job.
- Students working in collaborative groups can take advantage of group members for built-in peer review as they complete writing projects.
- Not least important, collaborative writing assignments usually entail much less grading time for the instructor.
Pros
- Diversity of Opinion: With more minds at work on the project there are more ideas and a variety of perspectives. Also, it’s highly unlikely that the group will get writer’s block as a whole.
- Division of Labor: Agroup of writers can break a large project down either by tasks (research, drafting,documenting, editing) or sections. It’s important, however, that work is equally distributed and individual members are held accountable for their contributions.
- Multiple Proofreaders: As long as there are no disagreements over grammar, it helps to have a number of people edita writing project.
Cons
- Conflict: With more minds, however, conflict, over either the substance or the process of the writing, becomes more likely.Yet when carefully managed, this conflict can produce better writing. Groups must also be careful not to let internal politics impede the project’s progress.
- Differences in Style: A collaborative writing project may display an unwanted variation in writing style if not carefully edited. Also, team members might have different working styles: some might be get-it-done pragmatists while others might be procrastinating perfectionists.
- Peer Pressure: If a team member is very quiet or unassertive, he or she will have a hard time being heard in the group setting.Collaborative writing projects, however, can be a good means by which shy people can learn to better interact with others.
What to Use?
Google Docs
Google Docs is a free service that only requires a gmail account (which nearly all students should already have) offered through Google that most students already have experience with, either from taking notes or using it to save their word documents. It offers several features that make it ideal for collaboration such as the ability to share documents among several people, commenting, and edit suggestions. It allows for students to work and write together in real time and facilitates communication.
Wikis
A wiki is “a collaborative tool that allows students to contribute and modify one or more pages of course related materials.” Wikis are collaborative in nature and facilitate community-building within a course. Essentially, a wiki is a web page with an open-editing system.Wikis work best when individual authorship is less important than the outcome that is created. Also, wikis are most appropriate for content that doesn’t need to be protected from accidental editing. The most commonly used wiki is PBwiki.For more information, visit Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching site about wikis.
nb
nb, or Nota Bene is a free, online based annotation taking tool that allows for collaboration.
Perusall
Like nb, Perusall allows for collaborative annotating. Perusall does require that if a textbook is being annotated it be purchased through Perusall or an access code is purchased. Other than that, it is a free resource.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis is an additional free online annotating tool.
Padlet
Padlet is a collaborative online bulletin board where faculty and students can share links, photos, and documents.
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