1. Collaborative College Composition: the Possibilities Lynn A. Casmier-Paz Dept. of English

2. College Composition—The Standard Process Students get paper assignments from the instructor; Students research their papers in isolation (to prevent plagiarism?); Students write rough drafts of their essays; They share their essays in class: – Peer group reading and response – Group members are given their own hard copy of the essay draft; – Instructor-guided reading and analysis techniques Peer groups give back the edited copy of the essay; Student writer revises the essay, based upon peer group suggestions; Instructor evaluates the essay.

3. My Ideas: Revised College Composition Process as Collaboration Students research their papers collaboratively, in the classroom; Students share ideas and help each other find information; Students write essays (this will stay the same—they write at home); Student writers bring essays on disks to Collaborative Classroom; Peer groups: students who share a “module” with the writer will read the essay on the computer, and edit/make suggestions on the draft via Microsoft Word; Student writer saves the peer group responses and suggestions as a separate file; Student writer revises the essay, and saves as a separate “revised” essay— final draft Instructor evaluates all phases of the writing process Instructor also assigns a “peer group reader” grade for each student who shares a module; Evaluation ideas? (can students then grade each other’s papers?)

4. Collaborative College Composition: Objectives Students will learn how to do research in groups (possible plagiarism problems?); Students will learn to do research on the Internet, and to determine appropriate and useful sites; Students will write full-length draft essays for peer group responses and reading; Peer groups will use word processing software to read and edit student essays; Students will read peer group responses and revise draft essays to produce final drafts that show they have understood and responded to peer group suggestions.

5. Collaborative College Composition: Evaluation and Assessment Students will be evaluated on every step of the writing process: Internet research; rough draft, revision, final draft; Peer group readers will be evaluated on the substance, quality, and quantity of their suggestions for revision; Student writers will be evaluated on the quality of their final drafts.

6. An Example of Collaborative Composition: From A Teacher’s Writing The writing seen in the following illustration is from an article that has been edited for publication by using Word editing capabilities.

7. Editing in MS Word Shows readers’ comments Deletions shown in margins; revisions shown in red

8. Letters can indicate footnote comments or suggestions at the bottom of the page Writers can accept the changes, or reject them—one by one, or all at one time

9. Conclusions Students will need time in the classroom to learn the editing features of Word and Internet research strategies Word’s features, although useful are not ideal The Ideal: GroupWare? Continue to research and try different collaborative writing software/GroupWare: – Software: PROSE, INTERCHANGE, PREWRITE, R-WISE Writing Tutor, Pre-Editor, Comments-Notes – Read recent research in collaborative writing and software (see Bibliography)