Collaborative writing refers to group writing, although the line between collaboration and editing may at times overlap, the practice can be deemed impractical and unproductive since this concept may not always produce works that are considered 100% coherent. Collaborative writing was of important focus during the 70’s by Professor Kenneth Bruffee who taught English and composition, he began arguing that students who wrote essays and fictional work in groups, tended to produce better work than when they worked alone.
After writing decades on this topic in collaboration, strong arguments in support of collaborative writing as a more effective mode of literary production flourished: individuals are able to produce better quality work, as evaluated along most sets of empirically valuable criteria that is associated by working with others.
The social construction of knowledge has been a topic that has been discussed by many scholars and activists for quite some time; most agree that knowledge is a social construction that is attained as we interact with the world. In the social sciences, the social construction of knowledge epistemology holds that human beings create knowledge and assign meaning and definitions to terms and concepts; that our epistemologies originate with us and within us. Human thought is related causally to social conversation: to clarify, our private thoughts spring from our public interactions with others. I once read somewhere that “knowledge is maintained and established by communities of knowledgeable peers,” for example a baby learns because the adults involved in the child’s life are constantly communicating with said child and labeling their surroundings to assign meaning.
All of the above clearly pave the road for collaborative learning from collaborative writing in the classroom. Some learn more from peers through socializing and collaboration in conjunction with other more traditional teaching techniques. To quote Bruffee, "We establish knowledge or justify belief collaboratively by challenging each others biases and presuppositions".
This class seems not to be too convinced with the idea of collaborative writing process. Perhaps in the future the professor may consider adding a collaborative assignment to test the benefits of this learning tool. In closing I have one question, as far as educational benefits, is there a difference between the learning process in collaborative writing in children and in adults?
The following video is a collaborative writing assignment that a teacher used in her classroom. The students got to critique each groups end product in order to help with the writing process.
If you take anymore Language and Literacy courses you will probably deal with collaborative writing, as a writer. I did nothing of the sort as an undergraduate at Oklahoma State, and I came to CCNY highly skeptical of the process. After studying under professors who really believe in the process, and having experienced those collaborative exercises, I'm sold on it.
ReplyDeleteI remember this exercise we did with Professor Macbeth (I talk about him a lot in this blog, but I haven't mentioned this before) where we wrote a narrative, in groups of four or so. Listen, before that exercise, I had no idea how to write good first person narrative. After I left the classroom that night, it "clicked." Because of that lesson (and collaborative experience), I now consider first person narrative my strongest form of writing.
Another thing: If we respond and read each others responses to the final project description, we are engaging in a form of organized collaboration.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the video -- very helpful in visualizing collaborative writing. We do engage in a lot of collaboration in this class--students are constantly helping each other figure out technology both in class and online, and students are also responding in limited ways to each other's content. We collaborate on the blog and on our twitter feed; these are all examples of the social construction of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first experience with collaborative writing. I wish the Foreign Language Dept. would incorporate this into the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI think collaboration is positive, but I'm still not sold on collaborative writing.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely one of those students who has gotten a lot of in-class help with the various technology we are being introduced to. In fact, I consider that kind of collaboration priceless. In terms of writing, I welcome feedback, but group writing seems to take three times as along and in my experience, someone always leaves the group feeling frustrated that their "voice" wasn't fully heard.