While attending a 2003 professional conference for technical writing instructors, the author noted a shift in attitude toward collaborative writing since her 1987 article had been written. At this point she was asked to reflect formally on the 1987 study.
Although “collaborative groups were taken for granted as part of teaching writing as a process” [351] in academic circles, employers viewed collaborative writing as merely a way to divide the writing workload and/or to provide input as subject matter experts. According to the author, the employers’ perspectives overlooked the value of collaborative writing, which is the increased depth of understanding that arises when co-authors share ideas and develop a common sense of purpose and respect.
In recent years, numerous studies have focused on professional on-the-job writing, but the process and value of collaborative writing was never the primary focus:
- A high frequency of professional collaborative writing exists (Faigley and Miller);
- Collaborative writing is described by the way a document “cycles” from a staff person who researches and drafts the article to the person who edits the draft (Paradis, Dobrin, and Miller)
- Collaborative writing can include a range of activities (Ede and Lunsford)
- Individual planning and drafting of a document that is revised collaboratively (Odell)
- A peer’s critiquing of a co-worker’s draft (Anderson)
- The coauthoring of a document (Ede and Lunsford)
The research returned limited information about the process of collaborative writing and “the special characteristics of collaboration involving group authorship” [354]. The author’s research sought to investigate collaboration as it exists on the job with professional people who work together to plan, draft, and revise a single document.
Research Methods
Participants. The study participants were recruited by the research team and included a wide range of collaborative settings and projects. A total of 20 respondents representing 14 projects were interviewed, and they represented a variety of professional areas: business, university teaching and research, corporate research, government, community service, and a legal firm.
Interview Form. In order to compare responses, a structured interview form was developed. Questions “concerned the membership of the collaborative group, the roles played and contributions made by various group members, the writing process used, and the nature and frequency of group interaction.” [354] The final interview questions evaluated the respondents’ opinions of the final document and the collaborative writing process.
Respondent Interviews. The interviews were performed by a pair of researchers and were recorded. The respondents were asked to describe a “particularly memorable” collaborative-writing experience. The term “particularly memorable” was not defined, and the respondents were not asked to define why the experience was memorable. During the interviews, the respondents were asked to describe as much detail as possible along with their observations and evaluations of the experience.
Analysis. The first stage of analysis involved the demographic information (who, what, where, when, why); the second stage provided information about the collaboration process.
Research Findings
Demographic Information. The author recognizes that although the small sample size does not answer all of the research questions, the results do allow some “tentative conclusions concerning the people, tasks, and processes involved in collaborative writing” to be drawn. [355]
The tasks respondents chose to report on included a wide range of projects: proposals, books, articles, goal statements, reports, and legal briefs. Of the 14 groups surveyed, nine were made up of people whose background, training, and specialties differed.
Information about the Collaborative Writing Process
Group Writing Processes. All groups reported planning the project as an entire group first, which was also reported as being the most satisfying part of the collaborative process. The planning process was most often followed by periods of independent writing. The draft stage was most often assigned to people according to areas of expertise. Interestingly, the two groups that attempted to draft as a group were unable to complete the task, and both groups ended up assigning the writing task to one of the team members. Only one group reported drafting together as a group “word by word, sentence by sentence,” [357] but it should be noted that this group has written collaboratively for 15 years. Like planning, revision was also widely reported to be a group process and caused group members to think of new ideas and perhaps change some old ideas.
Group Interaction. The groups met frequently during the planning phase and most often in a face-to-face manner. As previously mentioned, drafting was most often completed individually while the revision process brought the group together again. The authors found three characteristics of group interaction noteworthy: 1) group members “consciously or unconsciously assumed the role of audience”; [358] 2) conflict occurred in all of the groups with a varying range of tolerance among group members; and 3) three of the groups used computers versus meeting face to face.
Group Decision Making. Decision making was shared in two ways. First, any member was able to oppose any decision made by the group and was not affected by the leadership style of the group. Second, the decision-making power was shared within the context of the group and its related project and did not extend to other contexts. An important note, in my opinion, is that a member’s right to question a decision did not mean a change would be made: “the decisions made within these groups were ones that all members could accept, even though they might not entirely agree with them.” [359]
Group Leadership. Most of the groups were organized around a leader who primarily offered organizational assistance. In nine of the fourteen groups, leadership was established by seniority or rank.
Respondents’ Observations on Collaboration
The writers interviewed for the study found the benefits of collaboration worth the costs; the costs most often mentioned were time and ego. All respondents felt the documents they produced were better than if they had been produced by an individual (particularly large, complex projects).
Discussion
Functions of Conflict. Although many group members were uncomfortable with conflict, the members nonetheless recognized that conflict contributed to creativity and to the quality of the document. Irving Janis “found that failure to allow for the development of opposing views within the group could produce such defective decision making that the overall value of group effort was lost.” [360]
Distinguishing Shared-Document Collaboration. The collaborative writing process exhibited three distinguishing features. First, a single document emerged at the end of the collaborative writing process due to shared goals and a unity of purpose by group members. Second, communication is a two-way interactive process and is completely different than a supervisor/subordinate type of relationship. Third, all group members have decision-making power and share the responsibility for the final document.
Group Typology. The groups interviewed were brought together because the size of the task required extensive labor, and/or the size of the task required multiple areas of expertise, and/or one of the goals of the project was to unite opposing perspectives.
Questions
The authors recognize that since the sample size was small, only partial answers were provided. Furthermore, the authors identified numerous areas for future research:
- The respondents only reported on successful collaborative projects. Therefore, what are the aspects of “failed” collaborations
- What sort of leadership is the most productive in the collaborative-writing process?
- How does the type of task impact the collaborative process?
- How is technology impacting the collaborative process?
- A large percentage of groups had academic affiliations. What collaborative processes occur in other arenas?
- What is the interaction between the hierarchy of an organization and the hierarchy of individual group members?
Lori Hood and J.J. Carlson
12 comments:
Very good review of the article. I feel that this article goes hand in hand with our usability project that we are working on right now. We have a group of five and we meet almost every week and our meetings run smoothly because everyone has their particular duty and everyone has given their input on the material written.
The question about leadership at the end of the article and the comment in the article about leadership are interesting. Because in the article it states it should be the senior ranking person. That shouldn't be necessarily true, it should be the person who knows the most about the project.
Other than leadership, I thought the article was great.
I liked this article. I think collaborative work is very useful. Usually it results in projects that are more thorough and extensive than what one person could do themselves. I personally really like working on group projects. I agree that the planning process is the part I get the most benefit from on collaborative work. When I work alone, sometimes I will jump right into parts of a project I should probably do more planning on. When working as a group, we tend to follow the steps more carefully than I would individually, which over the course of a project, may actually save time.
I think the main source of failure on collaborative projects would result from conflicting personalities.
Good article and good summary. My experience in the corporate world is that sometimes collaborative writing projects take longer to complete compared to non-collaborative projects. But today's collaboration tools such as MS SharePoint and other content management systems are making collaboration a lot more convenient, and consequently, more effective.
This article emphasizes how much collaboration is involved in TC. When I tell people what program I'm in, they often picture some solitary person sitting around writing dry procedures. But TC is inherently collaborative, maybe even more so than other types of writing because we need to deal not only with editors but also topic experts, managers, computer programmers, etc. As Gary mentioned, though, technology is making it easier to collaborate from a distance, so maybe the picture of the solitary writer will become more accurate.
JJ and Lori -
Nice comments. I agree that collaborative work is very useful, but as Gary said, can sometimes be time consuming! I tend to find, however, that sometimes collaborative work can also go by more quickly because there are more people to share the tasks - depending on the project.
I have to agree with Mary on the failure of collaborative projects - I think that oftentimes, you get more than one "leader" in a group and they are unwilling to let others take that role. I remember in some undergrad courses that we were "forced" to have everyone in our group be the leader at a different time. That became really frustrating more so than normal group work can sometimes be because some people are not natural leaders and don't know how to hand work out to people and delegate the responsibilities, so it seemed that when that was the case, one of the stronger leaders would take over, anyway.
Thanks for the summary!
I love the idea that conflict is one of the primary creative forces that can lead to a better document. I think this point is overlooked by some people--people who wish to avoid conflict at all costs and who "shut down" when everyone doesn't agree. I think most technical communicators who work in groups see the true value of conflict. What's really interesting is how conflict in some groups leads to chaos and how well-managed conflict leads to creativity and success. There are so many forces in play: the personalities of the individual collaborators, the leadership style of the manager, the organizational structure of the group, the type of document, the timeframe, the stress level. There's probably no silver bullet for making sure your group works effectively--it's an interplay among several factors.
Since conflict seems to be the prevailing question at this blogging moment, I'll weigh in also. Conflict can be taken a couple of ways. 1) Conflict that doesn't seek resolution can be a bad thing - obviously. This doesn't happen often, but when it does productivity will certainly fall off, if not disappear completely. 2) Conflict that evokes a healthy tension does lead to a better product. This is the type of conflict that arises when experts who respect each others work put their heads together, give constructive criticism, and then in turn produce a better document. So where am I going with this? We all need allies and friends, we've talked about creating good working relationships already in our studies and readings. Ultimately, if you don't have a cohesive unit, collaboration cannot happen. When it does happen, there is not a better scenario available to produce a quality document. Make friends now!
I thought this was a very interesting article, and especially liked the acknowledgment that the group members "recognized that conflict contributed to creativity and to the quality of the document." /i had never really thought of conflict in that light, or had perhaps not thought of that particular situation as conflict. I thought their ideas for future research were great and would be interested in reading what has been done along those lines since the article was written, particularly how technology is impacting collaboration, and the aspects of "failed" collaboration.
Great summary Most of the college courses that I have taken require collaboration with others, but courses in technical communication have required the most writing collaboration. This is interesting experience and with right task division it has been successful so far. In my present workplace, however, I am not involved in any of the collaborative projects or collaborative writing and not sure how much of collaborative writing I will do in the future. But I have learned about collaborative writing in the workplace from rest of the posts and I can see that most collaborative projects follow tasks division format and written parts are combined before submission or final draft.
As to conflicts, I personally do not like conflicts in any context (personal or professional). I have only recently learned how to deal with conflicts. I believe that my gender and culture had a lot to do on how I dealt with conflicts in the past and still continue to deal with conflicts presently. But I feel more confident and comfortable expressing my opinion when I work in the group or when I collaborate with others even if they might disagree with my opinion. I would like to hear their responses and to avoid the “group think” which I believe is very risky for the successful outcomes of the project. Certainly, in the workplace often there is hierarchy and authority figure involved in the collaboration. In that case the group needs to follow the directions of the person in power. But it does not mean that person in power will have good leadership skills. The strong leadership can help group stay on task, deal with disagreements/conflicts better, get more reserved ( or quiet people, as they say in face-to-face classes) members of the group involved, coordinate tasks and deadlines if necessary etc. Not always people in charge possess these skills that are essential for the collaboration and often for the completion of the project.
As discussed in class on Monday, I believe that conflict is not necessarily bad. It is a tool to form an opinion. The use of rhetoric relies on conflict, otherwise rhetoric would be useles. I also agree with Robin's statement about leadership and who should be a project leader (knowledge versus status). Sadly, many companies put status equal with leadership, as status is defines and easy to measure against others while the level of knowledge may not. Intangible traits such as the personality of project participants also contribute to the dynamics of project leadership.
Interesting post and comments. When I completed my undergraduate work many years ago, collaboration wasn't really done. I don't really remember any collaborative writing project, to be honest. It has been an interesting experience to reenter the world of learning. Collaboration seems to be the norm, and I will admit that I sometimes find it challenging for all of the reasons already mentioned. It's usually more time consuming; it's often challenging to "meet up" collaboratively with other students two time zones away; it goes against my personal work style which is to procrastinate and then work hard to meet the deadline; and I dislike conflict so I will often agree with others even if I truly do disagree. But I will admit that many times, (not always), the finished product is better than it would have been if done individually.
First off, I thought your post looked so nice with the different colored titles, etc. Great job!
Before beginning this graduate program, I really had only one other experience with collaborative writing (which had worked out quite well between the other person and myself). So, I was quite shocked when beginning this program with all the group work assigned (maybe not "shocked" because that is such a strong word, but something like it). Therefore, I found this article relevant-and now would have to really agree with what Jane has said in her comment about technical communication being intrinsically collaborative. Perhaps my next occupation will contain more technical communication duties and I can have more collaborative writing experiences with other professionals.
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