Resources

Collaborative Writing for Teaching and Learning

Goudzwaard & Niemer. (2019). Educause: The Top Five Competencies for Faculty Innovation, Plus Five More

"The cultural context for innovation influences the skills that faculty need to successfully improve the status quo of learning."

"The top five competencies that a faculty innovator needs, regardless of the culture in which they are working:

    1. Teamwork: the ability to effectively and efficiently collaborate with others in a group
    2. Intelligent risk-taking: the ability to weigh potential benefits and disadvantages of exercising one's choice or action to assume calculated risks
    3. Challenging the status quo: the ability to set ambitious goals that challenge established practices—especially when tradition impedes improvements
    4. Intellectual curiosity: the desire to acquire new knowledge and seek explanations for things—even when the applications for that new learning are not immediately apparent
    5. Flexibility: the willingness to change or compromise according to the situation"

Career Readiness and Core Competencies

The Career Readiness initiative in the College of Liberal Arts identifies the core competencies that students develop through a liberal arts education. The core competencies prepare them for life beyond college. We believe that collaborative writing addresses all of the Core Competencies, but especially with regard to analytical and critical thinking, digital literacy, and engaging diversity.

Analytical & Critical Thinking: Writing is more than putting words on paper--writers make meaning. A collaborative process introduces negotiated meaning making and synthesis of multiple perspectives.

Digital Literacy: Technology is woven throughout the writing process. Students learn how to use technology in the context of a workflow and also learn how to collaborate through their uses of technology.

Engaging Diversity: Collaborative writing introduces fairness and equity into the writing process and group work, and also presents opportunities to engage in perspective-taking. One of our goals is to address intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class in writing and in collaboration.

Campus Resources

Significant work with collaborative writing and collaboration technology is well underway at UMN

Writing across the Curriculum (WAC)

The Writing across the Curriculum program holds annual Teaching with Writing sessions about using collaborative projects and attracts participants from departments of Spanish-Portuguese, Architecture, and Writing Studies. Our work augments those efforts.

Center for Educational Innovation (CEI)

Supporting Team-based Writing Projects in Your Courses attracted participants from the School of Social Work, Family Social Science. Department of Biology Teaching & Learning, Civil Engineering, and the School of Mathematics.

Faculty guide to team projects

Surviving Group Projects (for students)

College of Liberal Arts Technologies Innovation Services (LATIS)

Currently developing with others at the U a new service that focuses on technologies and workflows for arts and humanities projects. Co-PI Cristina Lopez is investigating intersections of writing and technology in as many ways as possible, including collaborative research. She has expertise in faculty development and communities of inquiry.


Equity and Diversity Resources

Office for Equity and Diversity (OED)

Disability Resource Center (DRC)

Diversity Community of Practice (DCP)

AAC&U, Collaborating to Learn, Learning to Collaborate

How to Embed a Racial and Ethnic Equity Perspective in Research Practical Guidance for the Research Process (pdf)

National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD)

Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit (Brown University)

Building Inclusive Classrooms (Cornell University)

Inclusive Teaching (Bok Center, Harvard)

National Center for Universal Design for Learning (NCUDL)

A Policy on Disability (CCCC)

Vershawn Asanti Young, “Should Writers Use They Own English?”