Collaboration
Posted by learningleads on March 27, 2008
In The Wealth of Reality An Ecology of Composition, Margaret A. Syverson describes a case study she conducted in order to explore what happens when students write collaboratively. The students were middle to upper-middle class enrolled in a first-year composition course and the assignment entailed writing an essay proposing a solution to a particular problem. (Students chose controlling the noise level in the dorms.) Students chose to write the essay together, huddled in a dorm room around a computer while one person typed the ideas they dictated. The resulting essay was disappointing.
In my WEC class, we recently completed a group Usability Project. It was my first collaborative writing assignment in graduate school (in the sense that we were all writing and submitting our names on a common document) which I attribute to the fact that I have been enrolled in a writing program, which more often than not is considered independent work (even if writing is socially constructed…) But unlike Syverson’s students, the only times we huddled were in the classroom to plan our courses of action. All other correspondence took place through email and online chat.
As I was reading the transcripts of the students’ conversations (they were audio-recorded while working) I envisioned how different the study may have unfolded if it had taken place today, almost 20 years later. (At one point a student marveled over the fact that the computer contained a thesaurus, as this apparently preceded the convenience of dictionary.com. I will admit it was at this point that I flipped back to see when the study was conducted.)
But to what extent has technological advancement altered the way we have come to see and understand collaborative writing? In my job, one of my projects has entailed writing a manual to help learners navigate one of our products. I’ve been back and forth IMing our SIM guys for support, my project lead has written notes throughout the piece, and it’s almost ready for the customer. Smooth collaboration. But I can’t say with any confidence that I would just as easily be able to produce a position paper with a group of people, no matter how intelligent or cooperative. I’m interested on hearing more of the class’ take on cooperative learning structures. I know they’re advantageous, but why do some of us resist them?
