Why collaborative writing is important

Collaborative writing—by its very definition—requires more communication than individual work since almost all co-authored projects oblige participants to come to an agreement about what should be written and how to do this writing. And careful communication at the planning stage is usually critical to the creation of a strong collaborative paper.

We would recommend assigning team members roles. Ensure that you know who will be initially drafting each section, who will be revising and editing these sections, who will be responsible for confirming that all team members complete their jobs, and who will be submitting the finished project.

Try free-writing or outlining before you begin your draft. See our page about generating ideas for more information about planning to write. Drafting Drafting refers to the process of actually writing the paper. Drafting as a team involves crafting each sentence of your paper together—by either sitting in the same room or collaborating synchronously online.

Drafting together is probably a good option if there are only a few co-authors since this can get unwieldy if the writing committee is too large. Individually Many collaborative projects are actually drafted individually. In this scenario, co-authors agree about the topics or sections in a writing project and then will draft these topics or sections individually. This is probably a good option for larger teams or those with members who have complicated schedules or dispositions unsuited for writing each word in collaboration with others.

Revising Revising is the final stage in the writing process. It will occur after a draft either of a particular section or the entire paper has been written. Revising, for most writing projects, will need to go beyond making line-edits that revise at the sentence-level.

Even if your team has drafted the paper individually, we would recommend coming together to discuss revisions. Just like in the drafting stage above, you can choose to write together or individually. Collaborative convergences in research and pedagogy: An interdisciplinary approach to teaching writing with wikis. Gehringer, E. Wikis—collaborative learning for CS education.

Kampf, C. The triple constraint of the document: Coordinating concepts in rhetoric and project management for engineering students. Khandaker, N. ClassroomWiki: A collaborative wiki for instructional use with multiagent group formation. Rentz, K. Designing a successful group-report experience. Business Communication Quarterly, 72 1 , Rice, J. Bridging the gap: Contextualizing professional ethics in collaborative writing projects. Business Communication Quarterly, 70 4 , Writing-to-teach: A new pedagogical approach to elicit explanative writing from undergraduate chemistry students.

Journal of Chemical Education, 89 8 , Contents Getting Started Why include writing in my courses? What is writing to learn? What is writing to engage? What is writing in the disciplines? Useful Knowledge What should I know about rhetorical situations? Assigning Writing What makes a good writing assignment? Using Peer Review Why consider collaborative writing assignments? Responding to Writing How can I handle responding to student writing?

Collaborative writing would be nearly impossible for team members who are not co-located without the technology we have access to today. Social media and technology are changing the ways we communicate in groups.

In addition, collaborative writing tools have made it easier to design better work processes. These tools provide ways to monitor what users are contributing and when they contribute, so managers can quickly verify that assigned work is being completed.

Since these tools typically provide revision tracking, it has also made data sharing simpler. In order to write collaboratively, we need suitable tools. Wikis such as Wikipedia are perhaps the most evident example of collaborative writing online: they are uniquely collaborative, as their existence is based on open editing and evolving as the community contributes.

Initially collaborative writing began with a file created by one person and then emailed to the group. Each member of the team typed in the document and shared with others. This created many confusing copies of a document each of which had modest to major modifications. With significant edits, a large team, or a large document, it could be very confusing as to which was most current.

With this method, if a group is using Microsoft Word, there are several valuable features that can help. Track Changes can be coupled with the feature Compare Documents to show the original document next to the edited document.

The other group writers would contribute their part by providing alterations and their agreement with the previous work. By means of synchronic discussion through chat, writing of the document is based. There would be a number of revisions and reaction through comments. There would also be changes and inclusions made by other writers.

Here varied sections of texts are contributed by the authors and the lead author has the power to merge and harmonize them. Two or more individuals compose a text where they negotiate, think and refine the content loudly. There would be one who is assigned as scribe or gatekeeper for the writing. In order to maintain elevated standards of working, businesses are switching to collaboration.

Collaborative writing is a practiced followed and in this process, more than one individual contributes for a writing process. At times of proof-reading and editing collaboration is important as single readers cannot find mistakes easily. Hilariously bad writing can be avoided by following collaborative writing. Hence quality is assured when collaborative writing is followed. Writing is improved when a team collaborates. There is instant improvement when quick feedback is obtained.

Any writing which is bad cannot live long. Hence there is enhanced improvement when collaborative writing is considered. More innovative ideas pop up when collaborative writing is achieved. The writers are also pushed to think more in case of collaborative writing. With collaborative writing, the team comes up with more ideas and clear concepts which lead to innovation.

A bigger project can be broken down into smaller tasks and writers can work on them individually. The work is distributed in an equal manner and each assigned writers are responsible for their contributions made. In a collaborative team, there are multiple proofreaders where editing and writing are done many times and checked too. There would definitely be working style conflict of individuals when different people are grouped together for collaborative writing.

This is a disadvantage, as progress is being held up for completing the task. There would be many people who try to be the leader of the group in collaborative writing. Such kind of ill will can disturb other areas of the work environment and cause tension amongst other writers. There may be an unwanted difference in writing style in a collaborative writing project if not properly edited.

The writers in the team would have a varied writing style. Some would be pragmatists who get it done and others may be a perfectionist who procrastinates work. When parallel collaboration is considered, anyone writer delaying the work may hold the complete project. In the same manner, when a sequential collaboration is considered, the work is influenced by one previous writer.

There will be a tough time if the writer does not get the work done on time as it makes the subsequent writer to initiate the work later.

At times when writer number 1 and 2 delay their work than the expected time, then there would be a delay in work. Since they are the initial writers their delay would provide very less time for others to complete their work.