Collaborative Writing in the Workplace

To further consider these statistics in relation to technology, it is interesting to note how much more common technological resources have become in this context.  The use of technology in the workplace is not only inevitable (considering the current circumstances) but generally more acceptable.  Gone are the days of printing out papers and turning them in barely contained in a manila file folder — now we use One Drive, we build websites, we write together in Google Docs, we use multimodal writing formats.  This changes the face of collaborative writing.

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What characteristics should a collaborative environment have?

The article “Professional Writing in the English Classroom” by Johnathan Bush and Leah Zuidema outlines the basics of collaborative writing, especially discussing the reasons for it and the ways in which it can be conducted.  However, by discussing these aspects, it also highlights multiple environmental factors that should be present.  First, a collaborative writing environment must allow for shared responsibility of whatever work is created. (Bush and Zuidema, 108)  A major difference between individual writing and collaborative writing is this joint responsibility, and to support this, the environment must allow for effective communication.  Whether this is a digital or physical environment, it is helpful to set boundaries before even starting a collaborative writing project that determine what communication methods will be used, and how responsibility will be shared.  This can help prevent conflict further down the line.

 

Naturally following these two points, in addition to shared responsibility and effective communication methods a collaborative writing environment must develop of sense of unity.  The article “More Than Just Error Correction” by Debra Myhill and Susan Jones also mentions how writing and language all take place in a context, and thus, outside circumstances and factors cannot be ignored.  According to this article, writing is a “meaning-making activity, rooted in social contexts, and reflecting power relations between different groups.” (Myhill and Jones, 325)  In collaborative writing, this definition is still true, if not heightened – especially in regard to the power relations question.  With a writing environment further complicated with potential power dynamics, teamwork and fairness becomes all the more important.  Really, these factors work to support each other.  If there are shared communication methods and a sense of responsibility, unity will develop.  If there is a sense of unity, it is more likely that communication will flow smoothly, and responsibility will be accepted where it should be.

 

Reconciling leadership dynamics is an important aspect of establishing this sense of unity.  Dana Herreman mentions this in her article “None of Us Is as Smart as All of Us,” where she highlights that group work is a democratic process (Herreman, 6) and everyone must understand their shared responsibility for participation to maintain this democracy (Herreman, 7).  Interestingly, she elaborates on democracy and the structure of participation, saying that participants in collaborative writing “need to learn to be effective in the various roles that emerge in group communication.  Whether or not a leader is assigned, one still tends to appear in every group setting.” (Herreman, 9)  Chisholm writes about leadership dynamics in a similar way, cautioning groups from creating inflexible leadership positions where the leader feels like they can’t be a member of their own group where they can ask for help and advice.  (Chisholm, 99)  Combining the reasoning of these two, it can be proposed that power in a group should intentionally, deliberately be made into flexible construct.  Leaders may naturally emerge, but this can be used to the group’s advantage.  When a participant in the group shows a tendency to be skilled in one area or another during the development of a project, they can take over as a “leader” (in quotation marks, as this definition of a leader varies greatly from the traditional one) in that part of the project timeline.  This logic can lead to a constantly shifting structure in which everyone is able to utilize their strongest abilities for the best of the team.

 

These are broad guidelines that can be applied across any writing environment.  To focus in a little bit on digital spaces, considering their rising popularity, we also must consider the usability of technology in supporting these goals.  Like with communication, it is beneficial to set explicit standards on what technology will be used and how it will be used throughout the collaborative process.

 

The Transition from College to the Workplace

Now that I have established key elements of a collaborative workplace, I would like to consider these elements while expanding on the claim that I argue throughout this project: that collaboration in writing must be taught, especially considering how writing is viewed as an individual process in many situations.  One of the major reasons I make this claim is because as a college student working on this project, I found myself coming to terms with the differences in being a student writer compared to being a professional writer in a workplace.  In college (and really, throughout most of our education), we are often taught to write as an individual process.  Students are sent home to write papers, and when collaboration on a paper takes place, it has often been framed as the dreaded group project.  Murray touches on the flaws of writing being taught like this in his article “Teaching the Other Self: The Writer's First Reader,” even starting it off by saying that “We command our students to write for others, but writers report they write for themselves.” (Murray, 140)  This takes into consideration not only an issue with lack of environmental or contextual conversation, but a difficulty that will only become more obvious in a collaborative environment.  If writing is a process that takes place in students’ minds that “has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person’s mind,” (Murray, 140) then it becomes helpful and essential to externalize this internal conversation [as Kenneth A. Bruffee put it in his article “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” (Bruffee, 210)] and thought process in collaborative writing.