Article #5 Review: "Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing"

Kittle, P., & Hicks, T. (2009). Transforming the Group Paper with Collaborative Online Writing. Pedagogy, 9(3), 525 - 538.

Full-text link (only available through ODU library proxy): Kittle and Hicks (2009)

This article begins with a rationale for collaboration in the writing classroom and an investigation of the ways that new media reshapes our ideas about that approach. Peter Kittle and Troy Hicks frame a convincing argument about how to think about collaboration as we move it from the f2f classroom to the virtual world of new media. They highlight the differences between group work and genuine collaboration in many of the same ways that Kenneth Bruffee and others have highlighted the differences between cooperation and collaboration:

People can contribute to a project or cooperate in a group without truly collaborating. Genuine collaboration involves a number of tasks beyond simply getting along and adding one part: giving ideas and feedback, creating content, debating the merits of an overall argument for the paper, writing and revising a particular section, researching information for that section, sharing one's writing by raising questions for peers about content and style, editing all parts of the document, taking a risk as a writer by sharing all of this publicly, and encouraging one's group members to engage in all these tasks.

Kittle and Hicks go on to argue that technology in fact offers some very useful tools that offer more flexibility and opportunity for genuine collaboration. the focus, then, of the second half of the article, is an exploration of several case studies that utilize two specific online collaborative tools: wikis and online word processors. Although the only online word processor they discuss is Google Docs, they examine mention several wiki options (Wikispaces, PB Wiki, Seedwiki) and offer a link to an online "Wiki Choice Matrix."

The project that Kittle and Hicks discuss all utilize one or both of these tools: they discuss using wikis for inquiry support, developing a collaborative study guide, and creating a Favorites list by using Google Docs (semi)synchronously. What I like about the article is its practicality. The concrete "case studies" offer realistic lesson ideas that can be easily modified and translated depending on the course's goals and content.

The cliffhanger, however, for this article is two-fold: the author close with an invitation to consider how issues of authorship should be addressed in this type of collaborative writing, and they also acknowledge that assessment issues will need to be addressed further. Certainly, these issues merit further attention, and I would argue that they bring us full circle to my review of the first article when I asserted that the lack of empirical studies in composition makes it difficult to ascertain the facts about how some of these ideas truly affect student's learning and creation of "good writing." I suppose, however, that such an argument should perhaps be held over for ENGL 840 Empirical Research Methods (Dr. Potts, here I come!). Overall, this article nicely rounds out the scope of the research I need to frame my project effectively, and several of their suggestions have become springboards for what I plan to put together for the teaching unit I'm designing.