Collaboration in Your Writing Classroom: Team Projects

At the recent TYCA West Conference in Mesa Arizona, October 2014, Levi Martin from the University of Texas at El Paso presented on "Creating Collaborative Spaces that Empower Students in Collaborative Writing Practices." His presentation was lively and enjoyable. To set the stage for this instructor, he is a doctoral candidate who primarily teaches Technical Writing, Professional Writing, and occasional composition courses for the university.

Martin creates short lessons and places students into small teams to apply the lesson. He first defines collaboration as joint writing to help students understand what the term means in this situation. Then he has students write a team paper on Success Strategies.

Factors to consider when creating these collaborative projects are motivation, time with the team, having the right tools, developing team contracts, and having multiple conferences with the instructor, both team and individual.

Martin bases his team projects on Achievement Goal Theory, Walters, 2004, 236. He believes that higher motivation equals higher achievement. Once students graduate from college, their future professional needs will require collaborative skills in the workplace. Therefore, team work has high applicability and relevance to students.

Martin also states that he doesn't call collaborative writing "group work." He calls it "teamwork," which has a better connotation. Other ideas for names to call this type of collaboration are agencies, partners, think tank. I mentioned that the term "partners" has not always met with a positive connotation in my classroom, and the others seemed to agree.

When creating a writing center for students, he named the tutors "writing consultants." This term similarly gave students more of a desire to go see someone for assistance.

Martin favors increased student involvement. When students have a voice in creating the assignments, this practice creates a deeper understanding of the work and greater sense of ownership. Discussion on the goals of the assignment also opens the conversation to discuss the assignment and its purpose in a more directed, useful environment.

Time with team members is essential. Martin claims that after the initial honeymoon, students need time to work with and get to know one another in non-threatening context, the opportunity to learn strengths and weaknesses of the members, and time for peer review. The instructor is the catalyst. Martin grades the comments peers make on paper, not the draft itself. He gives 20% of the final grade to the comments made on other students drafts and 80% to the student's own final version.

This instructor also uses tools. Martin uses "the Google."

• Google Drive and Google Docs provide (a)synchronous platforms
• Instructor can join the conversation in a non-threatening way
• Students can compose, edit, revise collaboratively without being in the same place
• All changes and comments are recorded for both students and instructor
• He also uses color-coded writing. Each student is assigned a different color for text.
• Presence is key. No matter the software used, the instructor needs to be present.
• Students need to know the instructor is aware and active in development of the work.
• Instructor presence develops accountability and builds motivation.

Students develop the contracts for team projects.

• In conjunction with developing guidelines, students have ownership of the process they use to complete the work.
• Students develop their own responsibilities, dates, and repercussions.
• All team members write the contract, which gives exposure to a new genre of writing.
• Writing the contract increases student awareness of the process and responsibilities.

Both group and individual student conferences are vital to team project development and success. Class time works well for group conferences, according to Martin. He uses office hours for individual one-on-one conferences. The instructor needs to be aware of up-to-date progress on the project. 

Open communication is also vital. Students need to be able to contact the instructor with any issues, questions, and concerns regarding the class.Limit rules to correspondence within reason. Work to get students talking to you. The more comfortable they are, the better questions students ask.

Martin created a Twitter account for his students so they could ask him short questions for quick answers. This type of easy access keeps the instructor from giving out personal contact information. 

If you are interested in developing team projects with your class, I hope you will read through Martin's ideas here and take what works for you. It is my personal opinion that these ideas would work best for second year college students, but team projects can also be used for first year and even developmental classes. I wish you all the best as you challenge yourself to try these team projects with your students. Data shows that classrooms doing project learning activities have higher retention as students get involved with one another and develop accountability.