Collaborative Editing

Brufee mentions that a symptom of difficulty that “students had adapting to college life and work was that many refused help when it was offered” noting tutoring and counseling sessions as the type of help offered by colleges (397). One assignment that I am considering developing is requiring students to schedule an appointment at a Student Writing Center for reviewing a first draft of a paper. My rationale for this task was that this effort would simulate scheduling a review with a Subject Matter Expert, an editor, or even a peer review in the workplace. I still may try to incorporate this element into my final syllabus project, but I stumbled onto another task that would also work well for collaboration.

Bruffee builds on Rorty’s idea of “normal discourse” by discussing a “community of knowledgeable peers,” which might be accomplished in a first year writing program by separating the class into small groups based on majors or disciplines (403). While looking at different examples of coursework from First Year Composition programs, I noticed that the University of North Texas’ freshman writing program mentioned group editing sessions. I liked the idea of a collaborative group discussing an article and collectively agreeing on what aspects could be improved upon. An instructor could then easily combine this effort with the idea of utilizing digital editing capabilities to enrich the students’ technology experience. Therefore, my sample collaboration assignment might resemble the following:

Editorial Team Project – I will divide you into groups of three or more based on your majors or disciplines and together you will edit an article that I provide. Individually, you will each read the article and annotate comments using either the Track Changes function of MS Word or the editing functions of Adobe Acrobat (Note: We will have a brief overview these software packages to introduce you to the editorial capabilities of each.). Collectively, you will discuss the individual comments and work as a team to create a single edited version of the article justifying the group comments and suggested changes. Finally, each group member will participate in a brief class presentation of the results. The presentation may include various aspects of the project, the process taken to accomplish the assignment, but must include the final results of the Editorial Team’s final markup.

Deliverables:

·         Individual editing markup

·         Final group editing markup

·         Presentation

Each student will receive individual grades based on the following:

·         Individual Markup – 5 points

·         Group Participation – 5 points

·         Final Presentation – 10 points