Ann Hill Duin

Computer-Supported Collaborative Writing The Workplace and the Writing Classroom

With the advent of electronic networking, writing pedagogy has moved into the arena of computer-supported collaborative writing, using collaborative writing as an instructional means to promote a more social view of the writing process. Therefore, as business and technical communication researchers and instructors, we need to ask the following questions: What kinds of software have been developed to aid computer-supported collaborative writing in the workplace and in the writing classroom? What benefits and problems have resulted from the design and use of this software? What research issues should be addressed as we approach the next decade of computer-supported collaborative writing? In this article the author explores these questions, highlighting five computer-supported collaborative writing systems from the workplace and five such systems from the writing classroom.

Global Partnerships: Positioning Technical Communication Programs in the Context of Globalization

Globalization is radically transforming technical communication (TC) both in the workplace and in higher education. This article examines these changes and the ways in which TC programs position themselves amid globalization, in particular the ways in which they use emerging global partnerships to prepare students for global work and citizenship. For this purpose, the authors report on a Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication-supported exploratory study of current partnership initiatives in TC programs. The study indicated a high level of activity, planning, and interest in global partnerships and revealed a range of creative and innovative partnerships that systematically integrate new opportunities for experiential learning, collaborative international research, and civic engagement in a global context into programs and their curricula. Partnerships also emphasize cultural sensitivity, equal partner contribution, and mutual benefit, thus offering alternatives to emerging global trade visions of higher education. The article also identifies key challenges that partnerships face, suggesting implications for programs and the field as a whole to facilitate successful partnerships.

The Impact of the Internet and Digital Technologies on Teaching and Research in Technical Communication

Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

TERMS AND TOOLS: A Theory and Research-Based Approach to Collaborative Writing

In the last decade, researchers have demonstrated that collaborative writing and collaborative project teams are common in professional settings. Faigley and Miller (1982) surveyed 200 college-educated professionals and learned that 74 percent of these professionals collaborated on 25 percent of their writing tasks, and Ede and Lunsford (1986) did a national survey of 520 members of six major professional organizations and found that 87 percent of the respondents sometimes wrote as part of a team. In addition to broad surveys about collaboration, some researchers have studied the processes that professionals follow when cycling documents back and forth to each other (Doheny-Farina, 1986; Paradis, Dobrin, & Miller, 1985); others have investigated workplace teams that use computer technology to aid their collaborations (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984; Sproull & Kiesler, 1988). From such studies, we see the need to prepare students for collaboration in the workplace, as well as to enable them to experience collaboration as part of the social context of the business writing classroom. To facilitate their learning, we need to provide students with the terms-key issues about collaboration-and the technological tools for participating effectively in collaborative projects. Collaboration has been defined as a process that requires support for more than just the exchange and maintenance of information. According to Goodman and Abel (1986), in order for effective collaboration to occur in the workplace, collaborators must establish &dquo;the maintenance of a common perspective or context in which the collaboration takes place. In particular, collaborators’ interpersonal communications must be enabled through informal, as well as formal channels, enhancing participants’ relationships and, so, enhancing the efficiency and enjoyability of the collaborative process&dquo; (p. 247). Goodman and Abel also state that in order to

Designing and managing virtual learning communities

There is a tendency to view education on the Internet as simply a more efficient way to access information and to communicate, but the Internet is much more than just another tool. The Internet has the potential to create communities where students participate in robust discourse and rituals of communication, establish their identities, and traverse community boundaries. We believe we need to design on-line courses with sound pedagogical frameworks and with a sense of promoting community values of diversity, connectedness, and civic responsibility. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe a framework that we use to design virtual learning communities. We explain community activities to consider, describe how we used our framework for designing three classes, and pose issues that arose when using this framework. We hope our thoughts will direct discussion toward the creation of innovative learning communities.

The culture of distance education: Implementing an online graduate level course in audience analysis

This essay details the experience of designing, implementing, and evaluating an online course in audience analysis at the graduate level. Through a discussion of the culture of this online course, I describe how the educational culture of the Land Grant Mission flowed into our efforts to create a quality learning experience, and how the Web modules and asynchronous (listserv) and synchronous (MOO) conversations influenced communication and learning.

Collaboration in technical communication: A research continuum

Although collaboration in technical communication is not a recent phenomenon, the attention it is receiving is new. This recent attention has generated an increasing number of well‐designed and provocative studies that are concerned with collaboration in technical communication contexts as well as with the processes of collaboratively conceptualizing, creating, and producing technical texts. Much of this research, which is forcing a reexamination of theories that affect the pedagogy and practice of collaboration, draws on a broad interdisciplinary foundation and utilizes an array of multi‐methodological approaches, both quantitative and qualitative.

Professional Communication in the Learning Marketspace A Call for Partnering

As society increasingly inhabits digital spaces in addition to physical places, the environment in which professional communication programs function undergoes fundamental change. The specific dynamics of these digital spaces have resulted in the emergence of learning marketspaces and present a program with three choices for positioning itself: (1) staying at its homestead, its own individual home page; (2) paying rent for a space in someone elses learning marketspace; or (3) partnering to build a learning marketspace. This article addresses the third choice and suggests how programs may go about partnering to build a learning marketspace. The authors examine the following questions: Why partner to develop a learning marketspace? What are critical components of a learning marketspace for professional communication? and How might we assess a programs readiness for partnering in the learning marketspace?

Information Technology and the Collaborative Writing Process in the Classroom

Researchers agree that once students are in the workplace the odds are high that they will collaborate on group projects (Bosley, 1991; Burnett, 1990; Ede & Lunsford, 1990; Faigley, 1985; Galegher, et al., 1990). An issue of ComputerWorld, a newspaper for information systems managers, contained a front page headline stating, &dquo;Teamwork Key to Workgroup [computing] Success.&dquo; Students will be using technology to assist their collaborative activities in the workplace (Schrage, 1990; Galegher, et al., 1990; Greif, 1988). Galegher and Kraut state, &dquo;Intellectual teamwork is an increasingly important segment of white collar work, and information system designers are working to create technologies that will help groups perform more effectively&dquo; (1990, p. 1). One form of teamwork is collaborative writing. Forman and Katsky (1986) recognized that members of collaborative writing groups need to attend to both the writing process and the small group process, and Galegher and Kraut (1990) note that in order to develop technology that supports teamwork such as collaborative writing, we need to understand the social and behavioral processes that the technology is designed to support. Through using information technology in the classroom, we can conduct research that will allow us to design classroom environments that give students time to learn the social aspects of writing and to mature as writers. As instructors we teach our students about the process of writing-planning, drafting, revising, and packaging-but we also need to inform our students about small group processes, allowing students to perform in groups and providing them with heuristics for participating in and evaluating performances in small

Developing texts for computers and composition: A collaborative process

We know by now that increasing numbers of composition instructors are teaching in computer-assisted classrooms. Barnes (1989), in her interviews with five such instructors, noted that if these instructors were to design a textbook for teaching writing with computers, “they would want one that contains writing activities that secondarily teach word processing” (p. 32). More recently, Kantrov (1991), in her review of research on the integration of word processing with writing instruction, states that: