A first-year English composition instructor at Del Mar College, Texas, incorporates technology into the English curriculum by using a computer and a panel overhead projector, which allow for class collaboration in the production of a work. A student volunteer does the typing while the class engages in discussions about topics for a process paper,…

James Berlin has idenitified three common ideological approaches in rhetoric in composition courses crucial to an understanding of how collaborative learning works in writing courses: the expressivist, cognitivist, and social-epistemic. One of the primary distinctions among these rhetorics is how the subject is perceived. In an expressionist or…

A demonstration of a classroom writing group in action, this 35-minute interactive video and instructional booklet focus on writing as a shared act of communication. The videotape models structure and process rather than any particular kind of writing, and the group process can be adapted to a variety of writing tasks and requirements. The…

Many students consider the writing of papers to be a lonely, difficult, and even painful process. To enable these students to improve their essays and research papers, a teacher has used a collaborative method of writing called the group paper. This method encompasses the various stages of writing, from freewriting of first drafts through multiple…

An ethnographic study used M. M. Bakhtin's language theory of socially rooted multiple voices to compare the group-writing processes of two corporate documents. Data were collected during a 5-month participant observation of the production processes of a 504-word executive letter, which took 55 days from first draft to approval, and a 1,851-word…

Developed for use with collaborative writing activities in conjunction with the Center for Educational Computing in English (CECE) Talk Program, this student guide provides sample activities for collaborative writing as well as detailed examples of the activities. The examples begin with a short exchange between people using the talk program to…

A teacher of an undergraduate literature course, inspired by the increasing use of collaborative writing in the workplace and by reader-response criticism, required a collaborative writing assignment in the course. A computer laboratory equipped as a local area network (LAN) was instrumental, enabling sustained, serious collaboration. Students…

Describes an effective method for having business writing students work together on a writing project. (JC)

Each year that the author of this paper, an English instructor at Moorhead College (Minnesota), teaches the first-year "research paper," one instructor turns more and more to collaborative writing work. And she admits that some of her motives in reshaping the research paper in collaborative ways can seem to be based in assisting herself…

This paper discusses the juxtaposition of teamwork as found in school writing assignments with the value of individual work as demonstrated in the ideas of intellectual property and copyright. It begins by addressing the question of whether students perceive collaborative writing tools such as peer response as helping or hindering them when faced…

Describes the "Capture Lab"--a computer-supported conference room designed to capture the thought processes, plans, and decisions of business teams. Discusses how groups have used this environment for collaborative writing. Shares observations of how users respond to the technology and how they learn to use the room. (RS)

Presents a story-writing activity to encourage the relationship between children's experiences with literature and their ability to write. Emphasizes the importance of having students work in cooperative groups. (MG)

Examines the work of five researchers who have conducted studies of writing with computers or writing with computer-assisted instruction in the following areas: composing with word processing; writing improvement attributed to computers; instructional software; computer networks for writing; and collaborative writing through telecommunications.…

Describes a classroom activity in which a group of five students compose an essay together which meets the following academic objectives: (1) awareness of what constitutes a thesis; (2) understanding of evidence which can be used to support such a thesis; and (3) a conception of a conventionally developed five-paragraph essay. (RAE)

Argues that few modern English departments promote communal scholarship and that collegial interaction focuses more on contemporary literary culture than on shared scholarship. Describes a collaborative publication project in which 10 professors wrote a book introducing undergraduate English majors to literary studies. (RS)