This article describes a sequence of assignments to guide students through an informed effort at making contributions to Wikipedia that persist, and suggests ways this set of exercises in social informatics may also serve a number of common goals in a variety of writing, literature, and other courses: analyzing and writing for explicit editorial guidelines (“standards” in information science, “house style” in editorial practice); understanding, conforming to, and even negotiating conventions of genres and subgenres; collaborating online; writing for an audience that not only is real but also talks back; and developing deep understanding of revision and the writing, editorial, and publication processes. Students first learn Wikipedia policies and practices and analyze the historical development of articles before they make contributions. The pedagogical opportunities arguably outweigh the concerns of those who doubt the credibility of an open-authored encyclopedia.

This article describes how a special kind of academe–industry collaboration—based on a joint appointment agreement between a university and an industry site—was set up, promoted, and experienced by a professor of technical communication and his student interns. To illustrate the nature and value of this kind of collaboration, the article discusses several of the professor’s research projects, and the teaching scenario connected with this collaboration, as well as the experience of the student interns. The keys to success for such an exchange are to (a) create a clearly structured agreement that is easy for both parties to implement within their respective institutions, (b) promote the agreement to administrators and employees at both institutions, and (c) launch into the exchange with enthusiasm for learning, networking, and finding research projects.

This article argues for a flipped learning approach to business and professional communication composing processes. Flipped learning sequences can scaffold more robust engagement with prewriting activities and support opportunities for in-class collaborative and facilitated drafting exercises. These types of learning experiences offer numerous pedagogical benefits, including more conscious control of messaging strategies and the development of more creative, rhetorically informed communication products. The effectiveness of this approach is explored through a case study of a flipped learning sequence and collaborative drafting workshop designed for an employment communication and résumé-writing assignment.

This article examines the 2014 Sino-American University Student Digital Micro Film Competition, a collaboration developed and administered between the University of Central Florida in the United States and Shanghai University in the People's Republic of China (PRC). By using qualitative text analysis and visual content analysis to review key materials and events from this case, the researchers studied information design and cross-cultural communication practices of various aspects of the partnership. The resulting analysis reveals unique information design challenges associated with cultural differences in communication practices, visual design, and administrative style. The summary of the case and the results of the related research presented here also provide readers with information design strategies that can facilitate design practices---and the associated coordination of event planning---across different cultural groups.

Globalization, most sociologists agree, is not a new phenomenon.Its phase in the late 20 th century and early 21 st century, however, is recognized now as one of the more transformative periods in human history-what Anthony Giddens (2011) has characterized as a "runaway world."In the last few decades, there has scarcely been a domain of human activity untouched by these forces-economic systems, mass media and communication, cultural flows, the movement of people.A global site as intensive as any has of course been our universities; indeed, it is these "runaway" forces that have been responsible for so many of the changes witnessed on our campuses in recent decades.They are evident, for example, in the considerably more diverse student cohorts who now participate in university education, along with the rich variety of languages and cultures they bring to their studies.Dramatic changes have also been seen in what is taught on programs, including the push within many disciplines to systematically "internationalize curricula."Along with new content are radically new ways of delivering programs, as digital communications become more and more sophisticated at replicating-and also reconfiguring-the learning experiences of the traditional classroom.Finally, these forces have also brought about new types of collegial relationships as institutions and academics reach out across borders to connect and collaborate on a great variety of educational and research enterprises.Versions of these changes have been experienced in many parts of the world.In my home country, Australia, for example, such has been the scale of these developments that international education has emerged in recent times as one the nation's largest export industries.But while global forces have reshaped university education in all sorts of interesting and dynamic ways, it is not to say that there are not issues and challenges associated with these developments.Frederic Jameson (2000) has suggested that globalization is in many respects a euphemism for "anglocization."The dominance of the anglosphere, according to this view, has meant that global capital-whether this be of an economic, cultural or educational kind-is unavoidably spread in highly uneven ways.Within higher education, this raises issues of power, privilege and potential inequity in the ways that different cultural groups engage with their studies, and in the rewards and successes they get to enjoy.Arguably, nowhere is this more evident than on the less-thanlevel playing field where first and second language students must compete in the assessment and evaluation of their academic abilities.So, while global forces have provided students with unprecedented access to what were once largely exclusive and culturally homogenous institutions, the view of many is that considerable work still needs to be done to address these "asymmetries" and to truly value the diversity that is now such a part of our institutions (Rizvi, 2000).A related critique is the view that globalization, in tandem with its ideological bedfellow neo-liberalism, has led sadly to an increasing commodification of higher education, so that students, especially our

This essay describes a year-long, grant-funded, cross-institutional collaborative project between Boise State University and the College of Western Idaho, a community college. The goal of the project was to institute an Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) model for first-year and basic writing in response to a state mandate to embrace Complete College Idaho, a form of Complete College America. The essay depicts the institutional context of each college and analyzes the challenges and benefits of the new model at each institution. The authors consider the differing roles of full-time and contingent faculty at the two institutions and the challenge of defining reasonable grant work requirements, given the varied teaching, research, and service expectations of instructors. The piece also considers the complex reasons Idaho students may not finish higher education and the extent to which the goals of Complete College Idaho could be met by instituting an accelerated model.

A pilot program of a co-requisite Learning Support writing course (ENGL 0999)  adapts features of Studio and Accelerated Learning programs to a two-semester sequence of First Year Writing. The program was designed to cultivate critical reflection, writing knowledge transfer, and student-led discussion. Narratives from the program director (Mendenhall) and a lead instructor (Brockland-Nease) discuss challenges in developing the pedagogical and programmatic support necessary to engage students and communicate with other writing instructors in the co-requisite format. The authors argue that ongoing, collaborative program design plays a critical role in supporting pedagogy for courses that, by design, serve as adjuncts to core writing classes

This program profile describes recent changes to the process for preparing graduate teaching instructors (GTAs) in North Carolina State University’s first-year writing program. The authors—one a non-tenure-track faculty member and the other a tenure-track faculty member—describe the philosophical, ethical, and practical concerns in scaling teacher preparation to accommodate rapidly growing cohorts of MA and MFA GTAs. By providing an example of cross-tier collaboration, the authors propose an approach to GTA preparation that takes into account that many of these novice teachers will begin their teaching careers as contingent faculty colleagues.

In this interview, James Porter talks about his professional career and what he sees as the contemporary challenges for the field of rhetoric and composition/writing studies. Throughout the exchange, Porter discusses his administrative concerns with the state of rhetoric in the field, the ongoing struggles with graduate education, the complexities of online writing instruction, and the potentials of programmatic collaboration. The interview concludes on a personal note about Porter’s scholarly trajectory, his collaborations, the fruits of his labor, and his advice for emergent scholars in the field.

Research problem: Our study focuses on how students collaborate online to produce specific written genres, using particular collaborative technologies to work together productively, and how instructor feedback and student perspectives on collaborative work influence those activities in online classrooms. Research questions: When composing using collaborative web-based writing applications, do students focus primarily on the interface or the text space? What kinds of expectations about collaborative writing do students bring to the interface and text space? To what extent can we characterize students' acknowledgement of a third space, what we have identified as “communicative interaction?” Literature review: Workplace collaboration is important because organizations increasingly demand effective collaborators, team members, and team leaders, and technologies for sharing, cobuilding, and feedback are readily available to support these activities. Student preparation for workplace collaboration is important because students struggle when they are asked to write together, particularly when the collaborative process involves new technologies, and yet knowledge of collaborative writing strategies and experience with collaborative technologies, such as Google Docs, are the very competencies that organizations expect of them. Methodology: Thirteen groups of 3 to 4 technical writing students and science communication students enrolled in online professional writing courses at a major research university wrote feature specifications and reports on the globalization of the sciences, respectively, using Google Docs within Google Drive. Sixteen of 37 students responded to a set of questions asking them to reflect on their experiences working collaboratively, learning new genres, using the collaborative environment, and revising with instructor feedback. Results and conclusions: We found that students struggled most with adapting their already established collaborative strategies grounded in face-to-face learning situations to an online learning environment, where they felt their means of communication and expression were limited. The results suggest that effective collaborative experiences, properly executed, represent a repertoire of competencies that go well beyond only technical considerations, such as being able to effectively assign roles, set milestones, and navigate the numerous tasks and processes of writing as a team. The small number of students and the single instructor with her own particular feedback style limit the study. Future research includes looking at how different feedback styles influence student collaborative writing.

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This article considers how professional writing courses can prepare students in various disciplines for the workforce. Specifically, I argue for Writing in the Disciplines (WID) internships where students learn to write documents relevant for their careers while participating in practical work experiences. In the WID internships I describe, instructors collaborate with coordinators across campus to establish writing-intensive internships that focus on the needs of students and the community partner. This article illustrates the collaborative endeavors of three internships, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned from WID internships.

Conducted through a collaboration between the Council of Writing Program Administrators(CWPA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study identified andtested new variables for examining writing’s relationship to learning and development. EightyCWPA members helped to establish a consensus model of 27 effective writing practices. EightyUS baccalaureate institutions appended questions to the NSSE instrument based on these 27practices, yielding responses from 29,634 first-year students and 41,802 seniors. Confirmatoryfactor analysis identified three constructs: Interactive Writing Processes, Meaning-Making WritingTasks, and Clear Writing Expectations. Regression analyses indicated that the constructs werepositively associated with two sets of established constructs in the regular NSSE instrument “DeepApproaches to Learning (Higher-Order Learning, Integrative Learning, and Reflective Learning)and Perceived Gains in Learning and Development as defined by the institution’s contributionsto growth in Practical Competence, Personal and Social Development, and General EducationLearning” with effect sizes that were consistently greater than those for the number of pageswritten. These were net results after controlling for institutional and student characteristics, aswell as other factors that might contribute to enhanced learning. The study adds three empiricallyestablished constructs to research on writing and learning. It extends the positive impact of writing beyond learning course material to include Personal and Social Development. Although correlational, it can provide guidance to instructors, institutions, accreditors, and other stakeholders because of the nature of the questions associated with the effective writing constructs.

Conducted through a collaboration between the Council of Writing Program Administrators(CWPA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study identified andtested new variables for examining writing’s relationship to learning and development. EightyCWPA members helped to establish a consensus model of 27 effective writing practices. EightyUS baccalaureate institutions appended questions to the NSSE instrument based on these 27practices, yielding responses from 29,634 first-year students and 41,802 seniors. Confirmatoryfactor analysis identified three constructs: Interactive Writing Processes, Meaning-Making WritingTasks, and Clear Writing Expectations. Regression analyses indicated that the constructs werepositively associated with two sets of established constructs in the regular NSSE instrument “DeepApproaches to Learning (Higher-Order Learning, Integrative Learning, and Reflective Learning)and Perceived Gains in Learning and Development as defined by the institution’s contributionsto growth in Practical Competence, Personal and Social Development, and General EducationLearning” with effect sizes that were consistently greater than those for the number of pageswritten. These were net results after controlling for institutional and student characteristics, aswell as other factors that might contribute to enhanced learning. The study adds three empiricallyestablished constructs to research on writing and learning. It extends the positive impact of writing beyond learning course material to include Personal and Social Development. Although correlational, it can provide guidance to instructors, institutions, accreditors, and other stakeholders because of the nature of the questions associated with the effective writing constructs.

This article links language requirements in rhetoric and composition graduate programs to a dominant monolingualist ideology in composition studies. It argues that future faculty can be best prepared to conduct disciplinary work in the context of linguistic heterogeneity through a variety of collaborative pedagogical practices that reflect and advance a “translingual” language ideology.

The aim of the present study was to improve learning from texts via strategies that train students how to process synthesis texts. Processing such texts requires goal-oriented interaction between reading and writing activities. The participants were 62 sixth-grade students, 33 in the experimental and 29 in the control group. In a pretest-posttest design –with a control group- the effects of an experimental programme were tested on (a) the level of learning achieved, (b) the quality of the written texts produced, and (c) the synthesis text-processing activities (in a sub-sample of 32 participants). The experimental group was trained in the processes involved in writing a synthesis using two expository texts about history via a strategy-oriented programme, while the control group worked on the same content using the more conventional tasks in their regular text book. Findings show that the experimental group outperformed the control group on a deep-learning content measure, wrote better texts, and exhibited more sophisticated text-processing activities.

I address how participating as a parent in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process has helped to transform my own approach to teaching by reinforcing how important it is to endorse a pedagogy that recognizes and values the individuality of my students. Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) has served as the best model I have found to help me move closer to my ideal classroom, and the course that most reflects this ideal classroom is my upper-level Disability and Literature course. The course's greatest strength lies in the extent to which its format and delivery are inextricably tied to its subject matter through an ethic of care(taking), especially through the incorporation of a number of UDI features into this course. What is more, while the traditional class meetings remain a privileged site of collaborative engagement and learning, the course blog is an equally crucial component to such collaboration, as the students create nearly all of its content. Indeed, the blog space serves not only as a place for students to record their responses to the assigned readings and in-class discussions but also as a student-driven supplement to the instructor-supplied focus points, a supplement that truly expands the range of possibilities implicitly represented in my choice of readings. I now understand such a pedagogical orientation not simply as a generic model for “good teaching” but as a reflection of a disability-inflected pedagogy of care.

This article discusses a collaborative course at Davidson College titled Representations of HIV/AIDS. With students, the authors look at the over thirty-year-old history of HIV/AIDS and the interwoven scientific and artistic responses to it. Not simply analyzing representations of HIV/AIDS from their disciplinary perspectives, however, they each interrogate the other's knowledge from their own position, both informing and learning as coteachers and fellow students. Their strategies also include organizing the course by issues salient to HIV/AIDS rather than major scientific/historical landmark events as might be traditionally defined; continually interrogating the historiography of HIV/AIDS; emphasizing the diverse identities and lived experiences of HIV/AIDS; exploring how stigma can thwart science and oppress others and how that has been answered by the arts; discussing concepts (such as patient zero) that, while useful for the scientist or artist, can still be problematic; and understanding how economics impacts both the art and science of HIV/AIDS. In the course students take on a prominent role as active critical thinkers, and their critical explorations of HIV/AIDS always occur at the intersection of art and science. This course imparts to students vital lessons in a world where complex global problems will increasingly demand interdisciplinary, collaborative solutions.

Background: When an organization decides to adopt a technology, such as a content-management system (CMS), the choice affects writing styles and processes, and conversely, writing styles affect the implementation of the technology. This case study compares and contrasts the experiences of writers in organizations that implemented different types of CMSs: a web CMS (WCMS) and a component CMS (CCMS), with a focus on the different types of training given to each group to facilitate the implementations. Research questions: (1) What are the dependencies between technology choices and the corollary editorial constraints that writers must consider in order to realize the benefits that the technology can bring? (2) What types of training are needed to ensure that writers become fully productive in a collaborative, structured-authoring environment? Situating the case: When adopting structured information technologies, such as CMS, organizations seek to reduce costs and improve efficiencies through the reuse and better management of content components, such as text and images, which can significantly reduce the costs of translation, reproduction, and maintenance of publications. Structured information technologies, such as a CMS, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Darwin Information Technology Architecture (DITA) affect technical communicators by changing writing styles to a more structured, topic-based approach, by introducing new tools and concepts for authoring and publishing, and by requiring more involvement in the selection, use, and maintenance of the technologies. Previous efforts to address these issues through training include works by Critchlow, who addressed the use of database systems to address challenges in developing documentation in collaborative environments; Edgell, who related how technical communicators proposed a CMS-based documentation solution to a software firm; and Lanier, who described how one organization overcame the resistance to new structured information technologies by writers. Methodology: The case was studied as an experience report by one of this article's authors (Bailie), in which the organizations engaged a consultant during their CMS implementation projects. The observations are qualitative and reflect consulting engagements with two teams over a period of almost three years. About the case: A common problem in implementing CMSs is interdependencies between content structures, on which the technology depends, and the editorial changes required to ensure that the content is best structured to take full advantage of the capabilities of the technology chosen. This case describes a four-phase training process provided to two clients: one with several contributors to the content-management effort in a single location; the other with more than a dozen contributors in several locations. Each client received four phase of training: (1) theoretical training-understanding pertinent theories behind good content development; (2) application of theory-how to apply the theories to their workplace; (3) software training-learning the new software to produce the content; (4) production-support immediately following training, during implementation. The results of the training were to increase the skill levels of the writers to understand how to leverage content in powerful ways using sophisticated technology. Conclusions: Determine the production needed for the content when choosing a class of CMS to address those production needs. Afterwards, match the training of the writers to the complexity of the system. Content strategists, project managers, technical communicators, and others involved in implementing a CMS need to allow sufficient time and training for writers to adjust their skills to the new technology and the new processes and techniques required to effectively use them.

Research problem: The widespread adoption of component content management in organizations calls for a comprehensive summary of the territory of this phenomenon. A summary provides stakeholders in component content management with a sense of how the practice has evolved and its implications to research, theory, and future practice. The last such review was published in 2003. This integrative literature review is intended to fill the gap in the literature by describing the current state of component content management as presented in the current publications. Research questions: How is “content” currently defined, described, and approached in the component content-management literature? What processes and tools are organizations adopting to achieve the goals of component content management? Literature review: The theoretical orientation of this review is Rhetorical Genre theory, which allows for classifying individual components as a genre characterized by granularity, reusability, and potentiality. Component content management gained recognition in the mid-1990s when early adopter organizations were looking for more efficient and effective approaches to reusing information between similar products or versions of the same product. Developments in the 2000s include a surge of publications focused on defining and describing component content management; new best practices for implementing a component content-management initiative; evolving processes and technologies for creating highly engineered, modular content that can automatically adjust to specific user requests and device capabilities; and collaborative efforts to integrate content creation and management strategies across organizational units. Scholarly and trade publications increasingly explore different concerns; whereas scholarly publications tend to offer critical perspectives on component content management, trade publications tend to describe processes and technologies and articulate best practices. Both focus on the goals of component content management, such as single sourcing, content reuse, multichannel publishing, and the structured content components required to achieve these goals. Methodology: To answer the research questions, we reviewed the body of literature on component content management. To do so, we searched library databases, Google, and Amazon.com for articles and books in both the scholarly and trade literature; we also sought out publications by well-known voices in component content management who direct successful consultant and/or research organizations. We then classified selected publications in relation to research questions and identified themes within each research question. The review did not explore other types of content management. Results and conclusions: Current component content-management literature suggests that component content management has evolved from a practice focused on single sourcing and reuse strategies for product documentation to a mature discipline concerned with designing pre-sales and post-sales information products for a multitude of devices and delivery channels. In recent years, trade publications have led the way to standardizing the discipline's core concepts, methodologies, processes, and technologies, such as structured content, structured authoring, single sourcing, component-based content strategy, Extensible Markup Language authoring tools, and component-content-management systems. Scholarly publications, however, have had comparatively little impact on advancing the discipline of component content management because only a handful of publications have focused on the topic and almost no crosstalk exists between these publications and the trade literature. Several questions about the practices of component content management still need to be answered, particularly in the areas of multilingual communication and content quality and usability. Based on the results of the literature review, we call for a coherent, robust, and ambitious component content-management research agenda that addresses topics such as content quality and usability, the diffusion of content-management systems, and global content management and that leads to studies that both advance scholarship and improve component content-management practice.

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For writing instructors and technical support staff, our informal collaborative experiment suggests the potential value of stepping outside one’s comfort zone—one’s domain—to forge institutional relationships that either don’t exist or that lack dialogue and depth. For writing program administrators, our experience might serve as a reminder that innovation often happens at the margins.

Quad charts are a genre frequently used in scientific and technical environments, yet little prior work has evaluated their potential for reinforcing technical communication fundamentals. This article provides background information about quad charts and notes the benefits of implementing quad charts in the classroom. In particular, introducing engineering students to this genre appeals to their tendency to outline information and incorporate visuals in the planning stages of the composing process. The authors share their approach for integrating quad charts within a collaborative project in a fluid dynamics course and note the ways in which the genre facilitated effective project planning and communication within student teams.

In this study, the researcher explores the role of literacy—specifically writing in the lives of adolescent Muslim girls who used writing as a sociopolitical tool when participating in a literacy collaborative grounded in Islamic principles and writing for social change. Previously, researchers have largely focused on the literacies of immigrant adolescent Muslims, leaving African American girls out of scholarly conversations. Employing methods of intertextual analysis grounded within a qualitative study, the researcher examined two questions: (a) What social issues do African American Muslim girls choose to write within broadside poetry? (b) How do these self-selected social issues relate to their identities? Findings show girls most frequently wrote about issues related to (a) war and violence and (b) the abuse, violence, and mistreatment of women and girls. Writing was a means to make sense of and critically shape their multiple identities, including who they are as Muslims, their community, and ethnic and gendered identities.

This paper argues that online communication products should employ item-to-item collaborative filtering algorithms to equip readers with the best potential sets of information that fits their specific contexts. Many online resources are utilizing item-to-item collaborative filtering algorithms which harness the decisions of users to affect their experience. Examples include the recommendation engine used by Amazon.com to help steer customers to products they might enjoy, the "Music Genome Project" used by the internet radio platform, Pandora, and various user interfaces that quickly determine the best user experience to present each individual user.

Students’ limited information literacy skills raise concerns among writing instructors and librarians alike. In order to improve students’ information literacy skills, a librarian and writing instructors at a two-year open-access college collaborated to design information literacy instruction and collected student work to evaluate its effectiveness with regard to students’ ability to find and evaluate sources. Our experience from our collaborative approach indicates that by using specifically designed instructional activities such as concept maps and research logs, students’ ability to think critically about their information literacy skills can be improved.

Background: Virtual teams collaborate across distances using information communication technologies (ICTs). A distinctive set of communication skills is needed by people who work successfully in virtual teams, and few universities or companies provide structured education and training in virtual teamwork. At a midsized southeastern Masters Comprehensive University, professors from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, and Education came together to explore how they might use cross-disciplinary student teams (groups comprised of students with different backgrounds and educational goals) to teach concepts in their own disciplines while providing students with the opportunity to become more proficient in virtual team communication. Research questions: (1) Can cross-disciplinary student team projects successfully support learning in virtual team communication as well as address the learning objectives of specific courses? (2) What can faculty learn from a cross-disciplinary teaching model that can be applied to virtual teams? Situating the case: Experiential learning is based on performing real tasks and reflecting on that process; it benefits learners by engaging them in complex, authentic situations. Virtual teams are significant because they support a great deal of the work currently taking place in our global economy; they are significant in higher education because students need to develop skills in international virtual communication before they are introduced to high-stakes work environments. In previous cases, students have collaborated across national cultures to develop project deliverables, such as websites, reports, and usability studies and present them in virtual environments using such tools as WebEx, Skype, and live streaming. How this case was studied: The findings from this case are based on individual student reflections, which were used to create a data matrix for each project, and instructor observation and evaluation. About the case: In Spring 2013, six faculty from the same university worked together to incorporate virtual teams into their classrooms. These six faculty members were divided into two groups of three with each group representing three colleges mentioned earlier. The faculty developed two interdisciplinary projects (one on infographics and another on social media) that enabled rich and diverse student collaboration. In both groups, the three faculty leaders worked together to define a project scope that students could achieve and that would relate to learning goals in each discipline. Conclusions: The lessons learned from this experience are that: (1) technical challenges will occur; (2) students from all disciplines must receive the same information; (3) instructors must balance respect for their colleagues and support for their students; (4) team assignments need to be consistent and fair; (5) instructors need to establish appropriate and fair assessment measurements for their own students; and (6) projects need to be realistic in order to show the students the value of virtual work.

Most professional education tracks combine school learning with practical workplace training. Although in theory alternating between these two settings is a great opportunity for learning, vocational education students encounter difficulties in integrating the formal explicit knowledge imparted in school with the informal tacit knowledge acquired in the workplace. This design study explores the potential of writing and peer collaboration as mediating tools to facilitate the articulation of conceptual and experiential knowledge. In the context of a school for social and health care assistants, 40 first- and second-year students wrote about critical situations encountered in the workplace, shared them with their classmates, and engaged in written and oral discussions with colleagues and the teacher. A web-based collaborative writing tool (wiki) was used for writing and facilitating participants’ interactions. The results showed significant gains in self-efficacy beliefs and performance on a case-based competence test for the first-year students, but not for those in the second-year. In addition, all students reported a high level of satisfaction with the instructional scenario and particularly its collaborative dimension. The discussion raises some issues and recommendations regarding the design of learning activities involving writing and peer feedback to support students in articulating conceptual and experiential knowledge

This study investigated students' practice of philosophical thinking through collaborative writing in secondary education. A philosophy course was developed following the rationale of the learning communities in which writing was used as an epistemic tool. 45 students organized into 13 teams participated in the course. In this study, a subsample of six students working in 2 teams during one collaborative argumentative writing activity were analyzed. These groups were selected on the basis of their output (high and medium quality) and because both followed an integrating construction strategy for collaborative writing. Data collected included audio, video and computer screen recordings of both groups' discourse and writing activity during collaborative writing (using Camtasia and Atlas-ti software). Analysis focused on collaborative writing interaction (types of talk; evidence of philosophical competences - problematization, argumentation and conceptualization; regulation of the collaborative writing activity and group dynamics) and the quality of individual and collaborative texts.Results indicate that quality of the interaction was related to text quality. Collaborative writing helped the students: 1) to transform abstract ideas into more concrete and appropriate philosophical concepts using examples related to their experiences, 2) to use these philosophical concepts in their own discourse and 3) to problematize their own ideas and provide arguments to support them. From these results, the importance of a structured context of learning to promote critical thinking through writing is discussed as well as the need to train students to develop efficient peer discussion for learning through collaborative writing.

Research on writing to learn is conceptually rich and pedagogically important. This special issue contributes to our growing knowledge about the variables that mediate and moderate the effects of writing on learning. One group of studies addresses individual writing; it adds to the growing evidence for the effects of several moderators, including cognitive, metacognitive, and personal utility prompts in journal writing (Wäschle et al.); and discipline-specific prompts for argument writing (Van Drie et al.). The individual-level studies also suggest moderator roles for discipline-general strategies of argumentation (Smirnova); and open-ended informational writing assignments (Wilcox et al.). Additionally, the Wäschle et al. study provides the strongest evidence for a specific sequence of mediation: Prompted journal writing to comprehension to interest to critical reflection. The second set of articles focusses on collaborative writing (Corcelles &amp; Castelló; Ortoleva and Bétrancourt). It suggests moderating roles for discipline-specific analytic strategies, and peer interaction; and suggests mediating roles for exploratory discourse and group regulation. Further experimental research on collaborative writing is needed to conclusively test hypotheses about specific mediator and moderator variables. The studies in this special issue, like many recent studies, are incommensurable with some influential theories of writing to learn. Rather, individual and collaborative studies converge to suggest that writing to learn may be conceptualized as a guided process of cognition and self-regulation.

This co-authored article describes a community literacy oral history project involving 14 undergraduate students. It is intellectually situated at the intersection of writing studies, oral history, and African American rhetoric and distinguished by two features: 1) we were a combined team of 20 collaborators, and 2) our narrator, Frank Gilyard, the founder and former director of the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum (CPAAM), was deceased. Because oral history is narrator-driven, Gilyard’s death required us to remain especially attentive to the epistemic value of his voice.

This essay, focusing on Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes’s 1930 play and infamous literary collaboration, explores the possibilities of combining new digital tools with traditional scholarly approaches to better understand how the multilayered racial discourse of African American literature in the early twentieth century informs this signal collaboration. Moreover, Christian outlines the benefits of including African American literature in digital humanities projects.

With the widespread popularity of distance learning, there is a need to investigate elements of online courses that continue to pose significant challenges for educators. One of the challenges relates to creating and managing group projects. This study investigated business students’ perceptions of group work in online classes. The constructs of learning and social interaction, process satisfaction, product satisfaction, and use of technology in the virtual learning environment were investigated. The use of social media networks by group participants was also examined. Recommendations are provided for business educators looking to develop or enhance teamwork in virtual learning environments.

Currently, African American girls are being depicted as overly sexual, violent, or confrontational, are judged by physical features, or are invisible across mainstream media and within school classrooms. Few investigations have explored how they respond to and interpret such imposed representations. Nor, for the most part, have studies examined how girls represent themselves among a society of others pathologizing and defining who they are. This inquiry investigated self-representations in the writings of eight African American adolescent girls ages 12–17 who participated in a historically grounded literacy collaborative. Coupling sociohistorical and critical sociocultural theories, I organized and analyzed their writings through open, axial, and selective coding. Findings show that the girls wrote across platforms similar to those African American women have addressed historically, which included writing to represent self, writing to resist or counter ascribed representations, and writing toward social change. The girls wrote multiple and complex representations, which included ethnic, gender, intellectual, kinship,—sexual, individual, and community representations. These findings suggest their writings served as hybrid spaces for the girls to explore, make sense of, resist, and express different manifestations of self. The representations the girls created in their writings did not fall into static notions of culture or identity. Instead, their self-representations were socially constructed and were responsive to their lives. This study extends the extant research by offering wider views of representations from the girls’ voices, as well as a broadened historical lens to view their reading and writing with implications for how English language arts educators can reconceptualize the roles of writing in classrooms.

Almost by definition, resisting the insidious convenience of the mainstream food supply requires persistence. This is especially true for food projects requiring fermentation—projects that unfold over days or weeks and require day-to-day science in kitchens where variables can be hard to control and where some degree of periodic failure is almost inevitable. In this article, a team of writers—scholars and community members—dramatizes a joint inquiry from which emerged a composite portrait of what we have come to call mindful persistence—an existential yet collaborative engine that drives our food literacies. Dialogic text features highlight the situated insights of individual writers, indicating that while this team shares an interest in fermentation, this interest does not require or assume identical understandings of the science of fermentation or similar positions in the probiotic debate surrounding contemporary fermentation practices. Instead, what is shared is a mindful persistence that scaffolds reflective action in this dynamic problem space.

Almost by definition, resisting the insidious convenience of the mainstream food supply requires persistence. This is especially true for food projects requiring fermentation—projects that unfold over days or weeks and require day-to-day science in kitchens where variables can be hard to control and where some degree of periodic failure is almost inevitable. In this article, a team of writers—scholars and community members—dramatizes a joint inquiry from which emerged a composite portrait of what we have come to call mindful persistence—an existential yet collaborative engine that drives our food literacies. Dialogic text features highlight the situated insights of individual writers, indicating that while this team shares an interest in fermentation, this interest does not require or assume identical understandings of the science of fermentation or similar positions in the probiotic debate surrounding contemporary fermentation practices. Instead, what is shared is a mindful persistence that scaffolds reflective action in this dynamic problem space.

This article explores how one writing initiative—ESQ’s “The Year in Conferences”—draws on the best practices of the writing classroom to train emerging PhDs in new ways to contribute to a profession that values depth and precision by developing a greater degree of collaboration.

This article examines memory and distributed cognition involved in the writing practices of emergency medical services (EMS) professionals. Results from a 16-month study indicate that EMS professionals rely on distributed cognition and three kinds of memory: individual, collaborative, and professional. Distributed cognition and the three types of memory reduce cognitive workload during a 911 response, and they help evoke information as an EMS professional composes the legally binding patient care report. In addition to presenting results, the article details the author’s interaction with two institutional review boards, which influenced the study’s methods. The article argues that scholars should conduct more research on the collaborative and distributed nature of memory as it relates to workplace writing practices. Furthermore, the article calls for developing writing research methods that involve participant recollection.

In this participatory article (with suggested activities, check-ins with the body, and freewriting), we use collaborative narrative inquiry to unpack considerations that underlie the planning, facilitation, and processing of a series of movement-based workshops. Critiquing liberal multiculturalist approaches in writing centers, we argue against the all-too-common flattening of differences and think through how embodiment helps us "work the hyphens" (Fine, 1998) or find "third ways" In contrast to role-playing scenarios that characterize many tutor education practices, we suggest that centering the body through movement allows for an alternative and more generative way to interrogate and restructure racial power. In total, we argue for attention to the body and embodied practice to engage tutors (and all writing center staff, directors included) in developing critical praxis for racial justice. For us, praxis comes in the form we call "critical tutor education," which is essential for writing centers committed to more equitable relations and practices, as we continue to strive for the "ought to be" (Horton as cited in Branch, 2007).

In contemporary science outside purely theoretical physics collaboration is a way of life.An article with a dozen authors is the rule, not the exception.In scholarship within the humanities, by contrast, seldom does one encounter journal articles or rese monographs with more than one author.My scholarly collaboration with Alan Gross is thus somewhat unusual.It is even more unusual in that within the span of two decades, it has yielded four books published by university presses, with a fifth nearing a sixth in the planning stages.The books we have written together differ significantly, for the better, from what either of us could have produced alone.

This reflection on effective writing practice is the result of a university-school partnership focused on collaboratively investigating the work of a successful 5th grade writing teacher. The co-authors collectively present the work of Mrs. Hutchison, a veteran teacher who worked in a predominately low-income school with a high percentage of students labeled English language learners. Mrs. Hutchison’s class was a space where each student was both a learner and a teacher and most students developed a great interest and love of writing. This reflective piece presents data documenting Mrs. Hutchison’s success as well as a collaborative reflection on her work intended to provide a glimpse into Mrs. Hutchison’s commitments and practices, and how these resulted in students’ learning and productive writing activity and achievement. In so doing, we hope to provide some models of effective practices that others may wish to adapt or investigate further.

Organizations are increasingly using social media to improve their internal communication. When successfully implemented, such initiatives can have a dramatic impact on internal efficiency, team collaboration, innovation, organizational alignment, and cultural transformation. This article describes a course offered by the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, on the use of social media for internal business communication that can be modified for Bachelor of Business Administration or Master of Business Administration students. The authors describe the pedagogy behind the course design, provide a course description, and discuss social media/communication consulting projects conducted in the class.

Dear Colleagues:I am writing this letter amidst the splendor of a New England fall, a time of year marked by transition from a leafy and robust spring and summer to the inevitable, if brilliant, decline preceding the coming of winter. This fall feels different, however. The loss that fall signifies seems deeper this year, its reach extending back to early summer. I'm referring to the passing of our beloved and inspiring NCTE Executive Director, colleague and friend Kent Williamson. Those who were fortunate to have known and worked with Kent can attest to his singular qualities. A visionary with a clear grasp of the here-and-now, Kent, like no other leader that I've known, saw the Big Picture-he was the best strategic thinker that I've seen-while recognizing the importance of paying attention to the details. He also had the gift of leading while making it seem as if WE were initiating. In other words, Kent was a first-rate listener and believed with his heart and soul that no group can thrive without the full engagement and collaboration of its members. In his memory and with his spirit, the CCCC Officers and NCTE staff will attempt to carry on Kent's work to the best of our abilities. I know that he would expect no less. Now onto my report. . . .FinancesThis organization continued to make investment gains ($216,922) even as it went $120,411 over budget on operations. We ran a genuine loss last year, as spending exceeded income from operations. In FY15 there were a few areas that led to the loss. Membership dues, as an example, are declining. Feedback on the work of the organization was positive, but many could get all they need from CCCC without being members. In the end, we were $13,938 below projections on membership dues.Ultimately, we need to focus more on strategic items based on our vision. We have $2.29 million in the contingency fund, but spending it wisely requires careful planning and making choices.Activities for FY16:* In addition to extending our substantial investment in access and equity ($32,829 for the PEP program to provide registration/support to contingent and adjunct faculty who need help to attend the CCCC Convention), we earmarked up to $3,000 of spending to match funds raised from the membership to provide a CCCC Contingent Faculty Travel Assistance Fund for convention attendance, and $3,000 to support the Chair's Scholarship Fund.* Now that the 5% amount from our contingency reserve is over $120,000, the FY16 budget splits that amount between research grants selected through an open application project (at least $100,000), and the cost of developing a database of graduate and undergraduate writing programs. This makes our investment in member research larger than it has been any year except for FY15, while also providing funds to build a renewable resource of benefit to students, faculty, and program administrators alike.* We included videotaping of member interviews and advocacy training across the convention.* We again provided $8,000 in funding to support a CCCC Policy Fellow position. This person has been working with our DC office to help coordinate follow-through actions in support of reports filed by our new state-based network of higher education policy analysts, and has provided research summaries and expert testimony/insights drawn from professional practice on public policy issues of concern to our organization. The funding provides a small honorarium ($3,000) and travel fund ($5,000) to help support these activities. The CCCC Policy Fellow is selected by the CCCC Chair and Secretary-Treasurer.* Under publications, we extended a third year of funding to support a CCCC Social Media Coordinator. This person works with staff as an independent contractor to both produce online events/discussions of interest to CCCC members (on the Connected Community and across other online social media platforms as well), and to more readily connect members to each other in social media contexts. …

Symposium response.

English education researchers have established that whole-class discussions can support language and literacy learning. However, few studies have provided examples of whole-class discussions in which students explicitly reference their classmates’ ideas in order to elaborate different, but related, perspectives. Research that has described students’ uptake of their classmates’ ideas has typically portrayed disagreement either as an obstacle to student participation or as a step toward eventual consensus. In this article, I offer a sociolinguistic discourse analysis of two conversations in which a preservice teacher encouraged her urban, 10th-grade students to disagree. My analysis demonstrates the positive effects of the teacher’s use of indirect challenges and provocative paraphrases—features of the African American sociable conflict-talk practice known as The Dozens—to promote collaborative disagreement during whole-class discussion. I argue that teachers can promote collaborative disagreement in whole-class discussions by appealing tostudents’ home-cultural disagreement practices, which may already overlap with argumentation practices valued in school settings. I call for further research into the influence of teachers’ and students’ out-of-school discourses on discussions characterized by collaborative disagreement—a practice that is essential to ELA curricula and to participation in a democratic, literate society.