Collaborating at the Stapler? Strategies for Real Collaboration

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Collaborating at the Stapler? Strategies for
Real Collaboration

• A Writing Across the Curriculum
• Writing in the Disciplines
• Professional Development Presentation

Dr. Robert T. Koch Jr. Director, Center for
Writing Excellence University of North
Alabama October 09, 2008
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Goals

• Understand the difference between collaboration
  and cooperation as it pertains to writing
• Consider strategies for collaborative invention,
  revision, and editing
• Consider technology uses in collaborative writing

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Cooperation or Collaboration IN WRITING?

• Cooperation
• Work is distributed among group members,
  completed independently, and assembled at the end
  (meeting at the stapler)
• Collaboration
• Work involves all group members through all
  process steps, so that everyone learns about and
  understands the topic content

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Why Collaboration?

• Vygotskys Theory of Language Development
  suggests that we develop language and critical
  thinking skills from social interaction as
  opposed to working alone.
• If thought is internalized public and social
  talk, then writing of all kinds is internalized
  social talk made public and social again
  (Bruffee, 1984, p.642).

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Why Collaboration?

• our task must involve engaging students in
  conversation among themselves at as many points
  in both the writing and the reading process as
  possible, and that we should contrive to ensure
  that students conversation about what they read
  and write is similar in as many ways as possible
  to the way we would like them to eventually read
  and write (Bruffee, 1984, p.642).
• Participants in collaborative learning groups
  learn when they challenge one another with
  questions, when they use the evidence and
  information available to them, when they develop
  relationships among issues, and when they
  evaluate their own thinking. In other words,
  they learn when they assume that knowledge is
  something they can help create rather than
  something to be received whole from someone else
  (Gere, 1987, p. 69).

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Why Collaboration?

• UNA Implementation of the National Survey of
  Student Engagement 2008
• Comparisons of NSSE 2006 and NSSE 2008 results
  for the active and collaborative learning
  benchmark shows no increase among seniors. We
  are holding the line, but not necessarily
  improving .
• Creating more group work would allow students
  to work on projects outside of the classroom with
  their peers and may assist in in diversity
  interaction (p.14).

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Why Collaboration?

• Three types of collaborative tasks
• High-order thinking -- define, discuss, and
  debate to solve complex problems
• Division of labor -- very large jobs that cannot
  be completed by an individual within a limited
  time frame
• Specialist or expertise-based -- each
  collaborator has a different area of expertise to
  contribute (Lunsford, 1991, p.6)

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Group Meeting Role Play

• Writing Roles to play during meetings (everyone
  should alternate, so that each person reads the
  whole text)
• Brainstormer Everyone plays this at all times.
• Drafter This person sits at the computer or
  with the paper and pen and does the primary
  writing.
• Reviewer This person will read what the other
  person has written to identify and examine
  paragraph focus, idea arrangement, development.
  This is best done when the reviewer reads out
  loud to the group!
• Editor This person will do grammar check,
  review source integration, check formatting.

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Group Meeting Role Play

• For all group meetings, do the following
• Have an agenda some writing goal(s) to
  accomplish by the end of the meeting.
• Assign specific writing roles for each group
  member to play in meetings and/or beyond. Do
  not assign parts to write assign roles to play!
• Be sure people understand their writing tasks to
  be completed by the next meeting. Good,
  realistic planning and timely execution often
  lead to success.
• Be aware of time constraints make sure everyone
  understands the deadlines

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Group Dynamics

• Decisions Made by
• Monarchy (appointed group leader)
• Democracy (group vote)
• Dictatorship (somebody grabs the reins)
• Stick with the pick, or move to strategies that
  allow for more democracy, not less.

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Group Dissonance

• Learning cannot be understood strictly on
  cognitive grounds it means rather joining new
  communities and taking part in new conversations
  (Trimbur, 1989, p. 605)
• The Consensus that we ask students to reach in
  the collaborative classroom will be based not so
  much on collective agreements as on collective
  explanations of difference (Trimbur, 1989, p.
  610).

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Collaborative Invention

• Every time you meet, discuss the topic in depth
  with your group. For each meeting, have two or
  more note-takers who keep track of what is said
  and who can compare notes after the fact. These
  notes will be used to draft, revise, and edit the
  paper.
• Write your thesis together and develop an
  organization or outline for the whole paper
  together.

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Collaborative Drafting

• Select your best typist or two to be the primary
  drafters. Everyone else sits around the drafter
  and feeds the person sentences write the
  document together, so that it doesnt adopt one
  persons voice, or multiple voices.

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Collaborative Revision and Editing

• Read the paper out loud together and discuss
  whether or not each idea, sentence, and paragraph
  connects to the ones around it.
• If the paper has been cooperatively written,
  group members should trade sections and read them
  as if the topic is entirely new. Ask open-ended
  questions, especially how? why? and what is
  the connection? This will help you see how to
  tie sections together.

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Computers and Collaboration

• Synchronous Technologies
• Chats
• Instant Messengers
• Asynchronous Technologies
• E-mail
• Discussion Boards
• Mixed Technologies
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Blackboard
• eCollege

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References

• Bruffee, K. A. (1984). Collaborative learning
  and the conversation of mankind. College
  English 46(7), 635-52.
• Gere, A. R. (1987). Writing groups History,
  theory, and implications. Carbondale, IL
  Southern Illinois University Press.
• Lunsford, A. (1991). Collaboration, control,
  and the idea of a writing center. The Writing
  Center Journal 12(1), 3-10.
• Trimbur, J. (1989). Consensus and difference in
  collaborative learning. College English 51(6),
  602-616.
• Vaughn, M. J. (2008). Synopsis of the results
  from the National Survey of Student Engagement
  2008. Florence, AL University of North Alabama,
  Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment.
• Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language.
  Cambridge, MA MIT Press.