You may be asked to write an assignment – perhaps a report or an essay – as a group or pair during your studies. This will require you to write collaboratively – this is a skill many of you will need in the workplace, where it is common to write documents and prepare presentations together. Collaborative writing has many benefits. As with group work more generally, having different perspectives, knowledge, and experiences will improve the work your produce.
However, there are a number of pitfalls that you need to avoid. Your work needs to have ‘one voice’ i.e. read as if it has been written by one person. But often, with different people writing separate sections all with differing writing styles, work can sound disjointed, making it hard to read. This can be overcome by effective planning before you begin, considering how you will address the drafting stages and selecting strategies for the refining and editing stage.
There are 3 broad approaches to collaborative writing:
Individual writing. This involves you all writing a specific section, and the work is put together at the end. While this seems like an effective way of splitting up the work, you do risk your work sounding disjointed. You will need to plan in time at the end to bring the work together.
Collaborative writing. Here you have one document that you all contribute to together. This ensures everyone contributes to all sections of the work as it progresses in one document, but it can be a messy and time consuming process. You will still need someone to check it through at the end.
One person writes. You could leave it to one person to write the whole piece, giving others the task of gathering the information and putting together some key points. Whilst this is not technically collaborative writing, it might be an approach you take if you have a good and keen writer in your group. However, if you do decide to take this approach, do ensure that your nominated writer is given plenty of time to pull all the ideas together. It will therefore require others in the group to get their work done well in advance of the final deadline.
Whatever approach you take, your collaborative assignment needs to read as if it is from one person. You need to consider how you will achieve this at the different stages of writing – from planning to completion.
This is an important stage of the writing process, so it is key that you do not begin writing until you are all certain of your roles and tasks. As a team you need to:
Discuss the task and ensure there is a shared understanding of what is expected of you and the approach you plan to take in answering the question. You need to read the assignment brief carefully together, ensuring that you cover all of the criteria (see our video on interpreting your assessment brief).
Talk about how to divide up the task. This could be done in different ways: perhaps someone needs to carry out some calculations, while others need to research theories or company information. You could consider allocating the task of editing and proof-reading to a team member who is strong in this area.
Set deadlines. You will need to work back from the main deadline and set key milestones for completing research, writing drafts, editing and proof-reading. Planning meetings after the deadlines, ideally in person, would also be a good idea to ensure you keep everyone on track and are having regular ‘check-ins’.
Discuss how you will complete the drafts. Decide on key areas such as: how many sections you will have, word counts per section, font style and size, and tone. Include a discussion about references; the style you are following and how you will record them consistently. You may wish to consider using a Referencing tool, like Endnote or Word to help with this, then all your references will be stored in one place. This will make creating a joint reference list much easier.
Agree on a way that you will share files. You can share a Word document over email or create a google document. You may also wish to use Onedrive to store the work as you progress.
It is probably helpful to spilt out the tasks of drafting and editing. The drafting stage is where you will agree on the content. Make sure that you set expectations on the research that is expected. If you need help finding academic resources, do make sure you speak to your Academic Liaison Librarian who can help you to source the information that you need.
If you decide to write sections separately, set an early deadline where you can check the content. Before you do this, place all the content in one shared document. You might want to allocate different sections for different people to comment on, or dedicate this task to a small number of people. At this stage you should be focusing on the content, not the writing style, grammar and punctuation. These can be sorted out later, once you have the main messages and content agreed. Do also focus on the evidence used. Is it appropriate, sufficient and correctly interpreted? You may wish to remind yourself of the assessment criteria at this stage too.
You should decide on the way in which you will comment on each other’s work. If you are using Word, the comments boxes work well, as they do not interfere with the original writing. At this stage try not to just ‘correct’ the work of another person; instead recommend changes that they may wish to make. Giving feedback is a valuable skill to learn, so take this opportunity to do so. Try to offer some positive comments as well as highlight where you have concerns. Remember at this stage you are focusing on the content, not critiquing the writing style of others, and feedback you receive is given with the intention of improving the overall assignment. The feedback is on the work, not on you as a person, so try not to take it personally.
Once you have agreed on the content together, it is now time for editing and proof-reading. Often students don’t leave enough time for this stage, resulting in a heavy loss of marks.
There are a number of things that you need to check at the editing stage. Firstly, you need to check that there is consistency in the look of the report. Consider using the headings in Word, and also ensure the writing is using the same font style and size. You will also need to check the referencing style is consistently used. Some referencing styles stipulate how you should label diagrams and tables. Make sure you follow these rules too, and if your referencing style doesn’t include this information, ensure that you use a consistent approach to labelling. If you have any appendices, ensure these are placed in the order in which they appear in your report and are referenced consistently, using numbers or letters.
You will also need to check the work for grammar, spelling and punctuation. When this is complete make sure you check that the final word count is within the limits. Finally, you will need to do a thorough check of your reference list.
You may decide to give the editing and proof-reading task to one person, or split up the task playing to different team members’ strengths. You could consider giving the final document to someone outside of your team to read through, to ensure it makes sense.
Final tips
Spend time at planning stage & set deadlines. Do not move to the writing stage until you are sure everyone has a shared understand of the task and the work that they are expected to do.
Meet regularly. Do not expect everyone to write their part and for it all to come together perfectly. To avoid everyone feeling frustrated it is important that you have regular ‘check-in’ points. This will ensure that ‘incorrect’ work is not progressed too far.
Finish the draft within plenty of time. You’ll notice from the above, there’s still a lot of work to do after the draft sections are completed, so do make sure you leave plenty of time to edit and proof-read. If not, you will lose unnecessary marks for work that is full of errors and is difficult to read.
Be respectful. Everyone writes in different ways and not everyone is confident sharing their writing. You will need to be skilled at both receiving and giving feedback. Do make sure you do this in a respectful manner, by focusing on the content, pointing our positive points and offering ways to improve the work.
Use one Word-processed document you can all access. While you may decide to write your very first draft in your own Word document, do create one master document where you all put your work in. This should be a ‘working’ document that you can all access from the early stages.