This paper discusses obstacles to teaching online documentation and shares a collaborative approach to overcoming these obstacles. The paper describes three obstacles: (1) students have had limited access to online documents and hypertext systems; (2) standards and principles of effective design for online documents are not clearly established; and (3) developing online documents requires the complex integration of writing, analytical, and graphic design skills. The paper proposes a collaborative task oriented approach which draws on the variety of skills and interests of students working on various team projects. Elements of the collaborative approach described in the paper include: interaction with existing models; discovery of criteria for comparing online documents; a simple"clipart" group project; introduction to screen design; scripting hypermedia for ideal user interaction; and user testing for orientation and navigation. (RS)