Effective Collaboration Requires Planning

The Write Stuff 2.2 (1992)

Whether they are called collaborative, group, or team writing, single documents that have two or more authors are receiving increasing attention in business and other professions. Learning to distribute responsibility for a research project among group members, carry the project to competition, and effectively write up the results in a single document are skills new employees often have to learn on the job.

Collaboration is also popular in many college classrooms. It affords rich learning opportunities through groupwork in addition to allowing pre-professionals to develop some of the skills they will need in the workplace. Writing Consulting: Faculty Resources suggests the following guidelines to reap full benefit of collaborative writing in classes:

• Collaborative assignments should be those that cannot be well carried out by a single student.
• Membership in each group should be thought out in advance.
• Each group should develop a formalized work plan.
• The completed document should receive the grade.
• In-group discipline and ongoing group and individual self-evaluation should be required.