Teaching technical writing through collaboration

I also teach technical writing, and one of the courses that I am fortunate enough to have is a class on technical and professional writing. This course is available to lots of other majors, not just technical writing students, so we get a wide variety of backgrounds and approaches to writing.

This is often the first time many of these students experience technical writing, instead of academic writing. The two are very different. Where academic writing is usually focused on demonstrating your command of academic material, and typically involves big words and long, complex sentences, technical writing is about explaining a topic using plain language and in terms that your audience will understand. Throughout the course, students learn about rhetoric, audience analysis, plain language, intercultural communication, document genres, instructions, document design, and research.

I've taught this course over the last several years. Every time I teach it, I change something based on what topics the previous students found difficult to understand. For example, last year, I changed the final project from a research report to a recommendation report, because students often had a hard time understanding how a "research report" fit into the technical writing genre. But students immediately "got" how to write a recommendation report, writing recommendations about everyday things like "5 places to have lunch near campus." The overall report structure is the same as the original research report, describing their research methods and the synthesis of what they learned, but the conclusion of the report is now a listicle where students iterate a list of recommendations.

This year, I made another change: I've assigned students to work groups so they can complete collaborative writing projects. This replaces a series of discussions where students were asked to synthesize a set of weekly readings, and discuss those topics with their peers. However, in recent semesters, students would often write weak analyses of the readings, and provide minimal engagement in the discussion, often writing something like "I agree" without diving further into the topic.

What I have found is that collaborative writing engages the students in a much deeper way than the online discussion

This year, I made another change: I've assigned students to work groups so they can complete collaborative writing projects. This replaces a series of discussions in the online learning platform where students were asked to synthesize a set of weekly readings, and discuss those topics with their peers. However, in recent semesters, students would often write weak analyses of the readings, and provide minimal engagement in the discussion, often writing something like "I agree" without diving further into the topic.

This semester, I've randomly assigned students to a 4-person writing team. Their assignment is to write a comprehensive analysis of the week's readings, including examples or other ways to apply the topics to professional work. We are only halfway through the semester, but I can already see a marked difference from last semester. I have found that the collaborative writing model engages the students in a much deeper way than the online discussions. They are working with each other, and they are clearly demonstrating that they understand the material in each week.

Here are a few key takeaways I have found from using this collaborative writing model to teach technical writing:

Set aside time to help students learn to work together

For many of these students, this may be the first time they've been asked to work together in a group. They don't know how to work effectively as a team, how to communicate clearly, or how to work through issues.

To help the students learn how to work together, I start with a class discussion about the Tuckman model of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. Most groups go through these four stages, even in professional work. By setting an expectation that most people experience "Storming" (a time of confusion when team members are still figuring out the project and their place in it) on their way to "Norming" (when the group has arrived at a common understanding of expectations and norms), the students can quickly come together.

It helps that I also provide time during class for the groups to work together. There's too much for the groups to complete the collaborative writing project in class, but they can make good headway and plan their next steps.

Provide transparency about each team member's contribution

The collaborative writing projects are a group effort. As such, half of the points are earned as a group—each collaborative writing assignment is 40 points, and 20 points is a "group" grade. For example, if the group did an excellent job in discussing all topics, they might earn 20 out of the total 40 points. If they only provided a "surface level" analysis, they would earn fewer points.

The other half of the points are earned from their individual contribution to the share document. We are a Google Docs campus, and I require that students submit a Google Doc for their assignment. I also ask that they grant me Editor access to this document; this allows me to review the document history, including each member's contribution to the shared document.

A colleague pointed me to a Google Docs extension called DocuViz that generates a chart or report, showing how much each student contributed to the document. As part of grading their work, I provide them a PDF copy of the DocuViz report so we can all see the same data. If each student has contributed a roughly equal amount to the shared document, they earn the other 20 points. If one student did not contribute at all to the shared document, they might earn zero of the other 20 points (although this can depend on other factors, such as if the student was unavailable for an excused absence).

I provided a lot of flexibility in the first collaborative writing project. This allowed students to realize that as they worked in one Google Doc, if one student made only minimal (or zero) contribution to the shared document, I would see the (non-)contribution to the final project. This effectively provided a warning to students that they could not "sit it out" and let others in the group do the work for them; everyone had to contribute.

Collaborative writing projects should be more than one student can do alone

I was concerned about how to structure the writing projects, until a colleague suggested that the total work for an assignment should be more than one person could do on their own. The assignments had to be structured so that working together became the obvious path to complete the project.

For example, in previous semesters I might have asked students to discuss one or two topics from a list of suggested discussion prompts. That worked well enough for an online discussion. But for the collaborative writing projects, I ask students to complete all of the discussion prompts; they are no longer "suggested" prompts, you must address them all.

The "side effect" of this is that students actually explore the topics in more depth than they had in previous semesters. And that is obvious after the fact—most groups start by discussing the topics together, and then divide up the work to write the analysis. In the end, every student gets to consider the topic from all angles.

Structure the assignments so students can compare and contrast each other's work

One mistake I've made this semester is that a few collaborative writing prompts were essentially just "bigger" versions of last semester's discussion prompts. While students seem to explore these topics in more depth, and these definitely have been helpful in the class, I find that the more successful assignments are those that ask students to write about the same thing multiple times and compare them.

In one example, students imagined a rhetorical situation they might someday face in their professional career, and describe how they would apply the three classic rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos to bear on the scenario. As a collaborative writing project, the groups were asked to write about four such scenarios. With four students in each group, this effectively asked students to divide the work to one per student.

This provided students an opportunity to compare and contrast the different scenarios and how they might leverage the rhetorical methods. During the in-class work time, I overheard groups discussing what scenario each team member might describe for "their" situation. The students also asked "compared notes" for how they would apply ethos, pathos, and logos—which was an excellent way for some students to work through what those mean.

Using collaborative writing has been a huge success this semester. Even though we're only halfway through the semester, I can see that the collaborative model is working well. At the same time, I am also making notes for how to tweak the model the next time I teach this course. With that approach, I find the course gets better every time I teach it.