collaborative writing strategies

Collaborative writing strategies

Collaborative writing has been the subject of academic research and business for over two decades. A number of authors have written on the subject, and each have slightly different views on the strategies for collaborative writing.

According to Lowry et al.  there are five collaborative writing strategies:

• Single-author writing occurs when one team member writes as a representative for the entire team. Single-author writing usually occurs when the writing task is simple.
• Sequential single writing. In sequential single-author writing, one group member writes at a time. Each group member is assigned a portion of the document, writes his or her portion and then passes the document onto the next group member.
• Parallel writing is the type of collaborative writing that occurs when a group divides the assignment or document into separate parts and all members work on their assigned part at the same time. There are two types of parallel writing: horizontal division parallel writing occurs when group members divide the task into sections, each member being responsible for the development of his or her assigned section; stratified division parallel writing occurs when group members divide responsibility of the creation of the product by assigning different members different roles. Some examples of roles that a member could be assigned are: author, editor, facilitator, or team leader.
• Reactive writing occurs when team members collaborate synchronously to develop their product. Team members react to and adjust each other's contributions as they are made.
• Mixed mode. This term describes a form of writing that mixes two or more of the collaborative writing strategies described above.

Onrubia and Engel  also proposed five main strategies for collaborative elaboration of written products:

• Parallel construction—‘cut and paste’. Each group member contributes with a different part of the completed task and the final document is constructed through a juxtapositioning of these different parts without the contribution of other co-authors. "Divide and conquer"
• Parallel construction—‘puzzle’. Each group member contributes with an initial document with the entirely or partially completed task, and the final document is constructed through the juxtapositioning of small extracted parts of the initial contributions of other coauthors.
• Sequential summative construction. One group member presents a document that constitutes an initial, partial or complete, proposal for the task resolution, and the rest of the participants successively add their contributions to this initial document, without modifying what has been previously written, hence, systematically accepting what is added by other co-authors.
• Sequential integrating construction. One group member presents a document that constitutes an initial, partial or complete task proposal, and the other group members successively contribute to this initial document, proposing justified modifications or discussing whether they agree with what has been previously written or not.
• Integrating construction. The writing of the document is based on synchronic discussion through the chat, with repeated revisions, where all group members react to the comments, the changes and the additions made by other participants.

Ritchie and Rigano  described three types of co-authoring used in the academic setting:

• Turn writing. In this form of writing, which is more cooperative than collaborative, authors contribute different sections of a text which are then merged and harmonized by a lead author.
• Lead writing. One person drafts the text, which is amended by the others.
• Writing together side-by-side. A text is composed by two or more persons who think aloud together, negotiating and refining the content. One of the authors serves as scribe and possibly also as "gatekeeper of text composition".