This paper presents eight suggestions for improving the chances for success of collaborative writing projects among scholars. Based on personal experience and semi-structured interviews with colleagues, eight "clues" for collaboration were identified: (1) a written pre-collaborative agreement; (2) an unambiguous work plan; (3) equal motivation on…

Presents a practice report that profiles the use of collaborative writing techniques in a dual-diagnosis drug and alcohol treatment program. Provides examples of typical patient-generated collaborative poems. Concludes that collaborative group poetry, when effectively facilitated, can generate a meaningful process-discussion toward values…

Describes a collaborative writing assignment which serves as a reassuring and illuminating practice piece for the research paper. (RAE)

Finds that both experienced scientists and college students found it difficult to carry out intellectual teamwork involving collaboratively authored documents without the interactivity and expressiveness permitted by face-to-face communication. (SR)

Examines whether collaborative writing projects force students to reflect critically on their own ideas. Finds that collaboration does not guarantee reflection. Suggests that how students represent collaboration and the writing assignment itself determines whether and how they reflect on their own ideas. (PRA)

Argues that students can use electronic bulletin boards to create a single shared text that can be added to as personal time allows. Notes that use of electronic bulletin boards allows valuable class time to be set aside for other instructional strategies. (RS)

Describes the results of a survey conducted at Penn State University that examined the collaborative publications of academic librarians. Discusses co-authors' views of the benefits of collaboration and whether collaboration produces a higher quality journal article than does a single-authored article. (Contains 29 references.) (LRW)

Examines collaborative academic authorship by addressing equity in name ordering and conventions used in crediting authorship. Suggests ways to make equal authorship visible and calls for development of collaborative academic culture and negotiation with scholarly journals and database services for recognition of equal authorship. (SK)

Two collaborative authors have found that discussions about collaborative writing are hard to come by. Despite years of research into collaborative learning, the collaborative nature of knowledge, and many examples of collaborative work by great writers, the notion of solitary authorship is hard to overcome. These authors found that few of the…

A dialogue between two writing collaborators reveals the act of collaboration as "empowering, liberating, exhilarating, and almost magical." Community-oriented theories of empowerment suggest collaboration can also be about reclaiming political and personal determinacy because working in pairs or groups can enable writers to encourage…

Writing instructors who would like to move beyond the collaboration provided by workshops and peer-response groups might consider asking groups of students to write a collage together. According to Peter Elbow, a collage "consists not of a single perfectly connected train of explicit thinking or narrative but rather of fragments: arranged how…

Discusses why writing centers are concerned about plagiarism, how this concern has influenced writing center pedagogy, and whether this concern has been counterproductive to student learning. (RS)

Suggests that through the shared experience of producing a story, students can understand plot on a deeper level and remember it more vividly than simply having it explained to them. (MS)

Recounts a conversation with author Ken Kesey. Describes a year-long graduate writing course in which Kesey and his students collaborated on a novel. Explains how the novel was written and how characters and plot were developed. Suggests that, if available to the class, computers would have simplified the writing. (SG)

Examines three classroom techniques for facilitating actor/filmmaker collaborative scriptwriting situations: improvisation, "contentless scenes" used to develop notions of subtext, and beat analyses (breaking scripts into character beats) used by directors to create characters that come alive on the screen. (SR)