Marcia Lynx QualeyTheories of Writing and Writing Instruction – FlashMarch 6, 2006Assigning Collaborative Writing: Fourteen Students RespondI surveyed fourteen current University of Minnesota students—undergraduate and graduate, young and “mid-career”—about their experiences with collaborative learning. Their ideas on the subject varied, and sometimes disagreed, but raised interesting questions.Some Differences: The older they got, the less excited students were about collaborative projects. Mid-career professionals often felt that collaborative projects took up too much time for too little result. Also, some of the interviewees yearned for moments of “real collaboration,” whereas some preferred collaboration where roles were divvied up.Some Similarities: Most saw a greater value to the process of collaborative writing vs. the product, and wished their instructors saw it the same way. All interviewees preferred collaborative projects that weren’t a major portion of the grade. All but one interviewee suggested that groups should be small so that people couldn’t “hide.”THE PITFALLS OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING AND WRITINGIncorrect expectations, poorly explained objectivesThe most frequent complaint was that the process wasn’t adequately explained or modeled. Modeling is the first thing that should occur, students said. What sorts of discussions should they have? Approximately how long should they meet? What should their group-process look like? They suggested that they might start by pooling information about how some students have succeeded at collaborative-writing projects in the past. For a large project, students wanted suggestions on how to break down the work. For a smaller project, students wanted suggestions on what could be done together, and what could be done separately.Megan, a undergraduate in the journalism department, had thought a collaborative project should take less time than writing a paper individually. “But it seems like more when you get to doing it.”Mooa, a senior Civil Engineering major, also felt he needed to know why a project shouldbe collaborative. He decried “group work for the sake of group work. Not much learned in this fashion, but learning how to deal with lazy people.”Several others wished the collaborative process had been modeled, and that they had better ideas of possible processes.Is it “cut and paste” or “real collaboration?”Marcia Lynx QualeyTheories of Writing and Writing Instruction – FlashMarch 6, 2006There was a stark difference of opinion on whether students wanted to “divvy up” a collaborative project, or whether they wanted “real collaboration.” The method of divvying up writing seemed to go the smoothest for most people. Many particularly appreciated projects where one student could be the presenter, one the researcher, one the writer, and one the editor. However, others—particularly undergraduates—wanted a “true” collaborative process, where students learned together. If an instructor wished to create a situation, she might want to begin with small groups that did research together and discussed a serious question together. Undergraduates thought this “true collaborative learning” worked best on difficult issues that they really had trouble figuring out on their own.Ty C., a freshman undergraduate, said he spent a lot of time with his groups discussing difficult issues before they started writing. He saw it as a truly collaborative process. “The only things that have really tripped me up in the writing process of these assignments was trying to incorporate both peoples ideas and thoughts into a good paper. Trying to sort out everybody’s ideas was the hardest thing for me.”Mooa, a senior Civil Engineering major, also called for more real collaboration, particularly during the pre-writing phase. “I find that collaborative assignments have helped in my lab reports, so we could help each other in understanding the concepts of the lab. The collaborative side of the work was in learning and understanding, and not in the actual execution of the writing. It seems that most collaborative assignments concern themselves with collaboration on the writing side, and no group work done to research, analysis, etc.”Kate E., who is a PhD candidate in the journalism department, questioned whether the projects she’d worked on were really collaborative. “It was hard to decide how to go about the writing process. In most cases we didn't actually write anything together—one person does one part, another person does another part and so on. Then it ends up being more of a cut and paste paper than a collaborative paper.”However, Kate said she did work on one process she deemed “really collaborative.” In this project, they worked as pairs on each section instead of working alone. “At that pointI was also able to recognize the value of working together on such a project, because much of the research done in our department is collaborative and I learned how that process worked. I think the process was more informative/educational than the project.”Dan B., also a Master’s candidate in public policy, thought it was a problem inherent in collaborative writing: “I think it’s a paradox that is inherent to the concept of collaborative writing. A written document should speak with one voice; the members of a group have different voices. A piece of writing needs to have coherence and logical flow. It's hard enough for an individual writer to enforce logic on something he or she haswritten. If several people are working on it, the odds are that the incoherence and illogic will increase proportionate to the number of group members.”Marcia Lynx QualeyTheories of Writing and Writing Instruction – FlashMarch 6, 2006He argued that for a true collaborative project, students would need to meet far more thanonce a week. “For undergraduates in centralized academic programs that spend most of their weekdays in the same class building or two or who live in the same residence hall complex, I think it would be easy to have this sort of a rolling, ongoing collaboration. Forbusy students who have limited time on campus, it is difficult.”However, on the opposite side, John O. (mid-career Master’s student), Will (Master’s student), John S. (mid-career Master’s student), Chanel (a sophomore undergraduate) and Melissa (Master’s student) appreciated collaborative projects