What can collaboration teach us?

We’ve discussed collaborative learning as a way for communities to create knowledge together by working towards a common goal. Some examples of collaboration that you’ve shared have occurred within gaming communities, workplaces, sports teams, and classrooms, just to name a few. In each example, participants work together towards a common goal and the creation of knowledge together for the benefit of the community. As Bruffee notes in his article “Collaboration and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’” collaborative learning is at its best when “knowledge is maintained and established by communities of knowledgeable peers” (646). Since peers bring different expertise to their communities, authority shifts during collaborative learning; peers teach and learn at different times and in different ways throughout a collaborative experience.

Your Assignment

For your second major project this semester, you will produce a Collaborative Learning History Project that answers the question, “What can our collaboration history teach us?”

Your final product will begin with a collaboratively authored introduction that orients your reader to the discourse communities of its authors and a common goal that your group’s collaborative learning narratives support; your group will work together to curate each member’s individual narrative in a way that you decide best supports your common goal. Your final product will also end with a collaboratively authored conclusion.

This project involves working individually to draft your own narrative of collaborative learning and working in a group to discover how to best present all of your narratives as a cohesive whole. Your individual narrative should exemplify how you’ve participated in collaborative learning in the way we’ve defined above. You will then work within your group to conceive of the most effective way to present your histories together, as one piece, the Collaborative Learning History Project. The following scholars offer models of how collaborative writing can look: McNamee & Miley and Efthymiou & Zea. Although each piece is different, they have a few things in common: this kind of collaborative writing involves organizing and curating individually authored sections between collaboratively authored introductions and conclusions. In your groups, you will decide which model of organizing your collaborative writing works best for your goals.

I am structuring in-class and out-of-class work in the following ways to support the delivery of your final Collaborative History Project.

• Blog Post 3, due T 10/15: this blog post asked you to write a brief history of your collaborative learning experience, focusing on explaining how you’ve collaborated within a discourse community towards a common goal.
• In-class on T 10/22: You will come to class having read a specific text (or set of text) to present with your group. You will spend some time reflecting on how you structured this group work. You will read Chapters 2 & 5 from Team Writing.
• In-class on TH 10/24: Review texts that discuss different modes of collaborative writing, ranging from fan fiction, to ghostwriting, to writing with A.I.
• In-class on T 10/29: Consider what you need to work well when collaborating with others. Email your in-class writing to andrea.efthymiou@qc.cuny.edu.
• In-class on TH 10/31: Project management time using ideas from Team Writing to identify a project manager and create a straw document. Assign Blog Post 4: Our Current Writing Plan.
• T 11/5: BP4 due. Writing time towards collaboratively authored introduction and conclusion. You will also develop your task schedule today.
• T 11/12: In-class due date for the Collaborative Learning History Project. Your final project will be posted as a new page to your WordPress sites. Use our rubric as you complete your revisions.

Expectations of the Final Project

The Collaborative Learning History Project is worth 100 points and will be assessed according to this rubric. I expect the following in your final:

• A collaboratively authored introduction that indicates the common goal or purpose of your group’s individual narratives.
• Logically organized–or curated–individually authored narratives of your collaborative learning histories.
• A collaboratively authored conclusion.
• Your work should engage with at least two of our assigned sources and cite according to APA or MLA citation method.
• Your final project will be posted as a new page to your WordPress sites.

Here is a successful example of the Collaborative History Project from last semester.  

Work Cited

Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English, vol. 46, no. 7, 1984, pp. 635-652.