This article surveys the literature on digital rhetoric, which encompasses a wide range of issues, including novel strategies of self-expression and collaboration, the characteristics, affordances, and constraints of the new digital media, and the formation of identities and communities in digital spaces. It notes the current disparate nature of the field and calls for an integrated theory of digital rhetoric that charts new directions for rhetorical studies in general and the rhetoric of science and technology in particular.

When writers plan a document together, they rely on gestures as well as speech and writing in constructing a common representation of their group document. This case study of a student technical writing group explores how group members used gestures to create a conversational interaction space that they then treated like a physical text that they manipulated, wrote on, and pointed at. These gestures suggested a group pretext that helped group members translate abstract goals into concrete plans. However, the close proximity of gesture to the physical act of writing may mislead students into thinking that the tricky work of translating abstract ideas into final written form had already been completed. Gestures and adaptor movements (such as fidgeting with a pen) also seemed to conspire to help individuals control the conversational space and call attention to themselves as writers. Implications for future research on gesture and collaborative writing, gender, and writing technologies are discussed.

Knowledge transfer among geographically separated members is recognized as a critical ingredient for collaborative accomplishment of work in virtual teams. However, due to the "localness" of knowledge, such transfer of knowledge is believed to be inherently problematic; thus, it is important to develop a solid understanding of the factors that enable knowledge transfer in such contexts. Drawing on existing literature on knowledge management and virtual teamwork, we identify four Cs (communication, capability, credibility, and culture) associated with individuals who transfer significant amounts of knowledge to remote members. Next, we test the four Cs in the context of US-Norwegian virtual teams engaged in systems development. The volume of communication, the credibility of the communicator, and the nature of cultural values held (i.e., collectivism) by the communicator were found to significantly predict the extent of knowledge transferred; although, contrary to expectations, capability was not found to have a significant influence. A number of implications for virtual team participants and professional communicators are articulated. Avenues for future research are also suggested.

E-communication in businesses has been the target of intense research. The theoretical hypotheses that have informed the media richness hypothesis have been influential in some circles and have also been strongly attacked by social theorists. It is argued in this paper that this theoretical polarization involving advocates of the media richness hypothesis and social theorists is due to two problems. The first is that there is a wealth of empirical evidence that provides direct support for the notion that human beings prefer the face-to-face medium for a variety of business tasks that involve communication, which seems to provide support for the media richness hypothesis. The second problem is that the media richness hypothesis is built on a vacuum, as no underlying explanation was ever presented by media richness theorists for our predisposition toward rich (or face-to-face) media. The main goal of this paper is to offer a solution to these problems by providing an alternative to the media richness hypothesis, referred to here as media naturalness hypothesis, developed based on Darwin's theory of evolution. The media naturalness hypothesis argues that, other things being equal, a decrease in the degree of naturalness of a communication medium (or its degree of similarity to the face-to-face medium) leads to the following effects in connection with a communication interaction: (a) increased cognitive effort, (b) increased communication ambiguity, and (c) decreased physiological arousal. Like the media richness hypothesis, the media naturalness hypothesis has important implications for the selection, use, and deployment of e-communication tools in organizations. However, unlike the media richness hypothesis, the media naturalness hypothesis is compatible with social theories of behavior toward e-communication tools. Among other things, this paper shows that the media naturalness hypothesis (unlike its media richness counterpart) is compatible with the notion that, regardless of the obstacles posed by low naturalness media, individuals using those media to perform collaborative tasks may achieve the same or better task-related outcomes than individuals using media with higher degrees of naturalness.

This study contributes to a discussion on collaboration and technical/professional communication in indeterminate zones or less familiar sites for collaboration. The interdisciplinary group for this case study collaborated to write a project proposal to solicit funds from the US government for constructing a test bed for immune buildings as a tactic for combating potential biological and chemical terrorist incidents. Their approach to collaboration coincided with several approaches previously addressed in professional and technical communication research. Novel and creative approaches emerged as a result of this collaboration, but in some instances, disciplinary differences, as manifested by disputes over concepts and terminologies, posed obstacles to collaboration. Such challenges necessitated strong leadership, which was also critical for managing group process.

A successful collaboration resulted in a researcher and a teacher linking professional development with change in small-group reading instruction and student achievement.

When mixed-gendered student teams collaborate on technical writing tasks, a single male often emerges as the group computer expert. The effects of this trend on perceptions of workload are unknown. This article reports the results of a study in which 12 mixed-gendered teams answered questionnaires on the division and perceptions of labor in their teams. Detailed case studies of four teams supplement the questionnaires. Findings suggest that computer work was highly visible, highly valued, and dominated by men. By contrast, writing was less visible and selectively recognized. Some men were credited with strong writing skills even though they did not produce writing for the project. Moreover, some students explicitly leveraged their computer expertise to avoid writing; furthermore, these computer experts rarely shared technical expertise with others in the context of the team project.

Receiving innovative end user feedback on an information system is essential for acquiring further development ideas. The feedback gathering method should encourage end users to freely bring out new ideas. The method should be repeatable and transferable to allow its use in various contexts. We employ the principles of collaboration engineering using so-callled thinkLets as building blocks to construct a feedback gathering process. We apply the principles for receiving new development ideas for a multi-university student information system in Finland. We reflect on the experiences and give insights on applying two alternative processes in a complex organizational context.

Electronic collaboration has become a driver for productivity as organizations develop linkages for the planning, sourcing, and execution of goods and services. These organizations require mechanisms to harness the diverse and personalized intellectual resources that are distributed across the world. While electronic collaboration technologies have made it possible to harness intellectual resources across space and time, knowledge management is locked in a paradox of perception-the more valuable a knowledge resource is seen to be, the less it is shared. This paper develops a framework for the activation of knowledge that relies on a view of knowledge-as-identity. The analysis of a case study reveals "activation conditions" that delineate processes in which electronic collaboration technologies can be most effective. This has implications for the creation of collaborative work environments that enhance knowledge activation in organizations.

This article provides an introduction to the special issue on Expanding the Boundaries of E-Collaboration. It presents an operational definition of the term e-collaboration, and a historical review of the development of e-collaboration tools and related academic research. That is followed by an introductory development of the notion of e-collaboration boundaries. The article concludes with a summarized discussion of the articles published in the special issue.

As virtual teams constitute an important and pervasive organizational structure, research with the aim of improving the effectiveness of these teams is vital. Although critical topics such as conflict, coordination and trust are being addressed, research on creativity in virtual teams has been quite limited. Given that creative solutions to complex problems create and sustain a firm's competitive advantage, an investigation of creativity in virtual teams is warranted. The goal of the current study is to explore the influences on creativity in asynchronous virtual teams. Predicated upon grounded theory, this exploration is accomplished through an in-depth qualitative analysis of the team communication transcripts of ten virtual teams. Teams were composed of graduate students who interacted solely via an asynchronous, computer conferencing system to develop the high-level requirements and design for a new innovative product. Significant inhibitors to the creative performance of virtual teams included dominance, domain knowledge, downward norm setting, lack of shared understanding, time pressure, and technical difficulties. Significant enhancers to creativity included stimulating colleagues, the existence of a variety of social influences, a collaborative team climate, and both the surfacing and reduction of equivocality.

There has been a proliferation of competing explanations regarding the inconsistent results reported by the e-collaboration literature since its inception. This study advances another possible explanation by investigating the range of multilevel issues that can be encountered in research on the use of synchronous or asynchronous group support systems. We introduce concepts of levels of analysis from the management literature and then examine all empirical studies of e-collaboration from seven information systems journals for the period 1999-2003. We identified a total of 54 studies of e-collaboration in these journals, and after excluding 18 nonconforming studies - those that were primarily conceptual, qualitative, or exploratory only-we analyzed the levels of analysis issues in the remaining 36 empirical studies. Based on our analysis and classification of these studies into six different clusters according to their levels of analysis, we found that a majority of these studies contain one or more problems of levels incongruence that cast doubts on the validity of their results. It is indeed possible that these methodological problems are in part responsible for the inconsistent results reported in this literature, especially since researchers' frequent decisions to analyze data at the individual level - even when the theory was formulated at the group level and when the research setting featured individuals working in groups -may very well have artificially inflated the authors' chances of finding statistically significant results. Based on our discussion of levels of analysis concepts, we hope to provide guidance to empirical researchers who study e-ollaboration.

In this paper we investigate the effects that team size has on geographically distributed team behavior and technology choice. We report results from a survey of distributed team members conducted within a large, multinational technology manufacturing organization. Responses indicate that members of smaller teams participated more actively on their team, were more committed to their team, were more aware of the goals of the team, had greater awareness of other team members, and were in teams with higher levels of rapport. Larger teams are more conscientious than smaller teams in preparing meeting agendas. Team size was also associated with different technology choice: larger teams adopted technology to support the coordination of asynchronous work, while smaller teams adopted technology that primarily supported collaboration. We discuss the implications of distributed team size for team performance and technology adoption.

This paper presents a cross-case comparison of experiences from organizational adoption and use of e-collaboration technologies in two large, global companies. Challenges in the global implementation process were found to increase with the organizational and geographical scope of the implementation, level of autonomy in the adoption process, cultural diversity, technological heterogeneity, and the level of work process support embedded in the system. Alignment with existing collaborative work practices resulted in faster adoption of the technological solution. Highly competitive conditions restricted the resources available for training and experience transfer between projects. Clients' preferences for co-located project operations served as a potential barrier to the very concept of global e-collaboration. The study increases our understanding of the adoption and use of permanent e-collaboration infrastructures at the organizational level, thus expanding the focus of global e-collaboration research beyond the level of ad hoc, virtual teams.

Interclass collaboration in the context of an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion and analysis of global problems yields significant benefits in the development of ESL students’ sense of efficacy, their literacy, and their critical thinking skills.

There has been a proliferation of competing explanations regarding the inconsistent results reported by the e-collaboration literature since its inception. This study advances another possible explanation by investigating the range of multilevel issues that can be encountered in research on the use of synchronous or asynchronous group support systems. We introduce concepts of levels of analysis from the management literature and then examine all empirical studies of e-collaboration from seven information systems journals for the period 1999-2003. We identified a total of 54 studies of e-collaboration in these journals, and after excluding 18 nonconforming studies - those that were primarily conceptual, qualitative, or exploratory only-we analyzed the levels of analysis issues in the remaining 36 empirical studies. Based on our analysis and classification of these studies into six different clusters according to their levels of analysis, we found that a majority of these studies contain one or more problems of levels incongruence that cast doubts on the validity of their results. It is indeed possible that these methodological problems are in part responsible for the inconsistent results reported in this literature, especially since researchers' frequent decisions to analyze data at the individual level - even when the theory was formulated at the group level and when the research setting featured individuals working in groups -may very well have artificially inflated the authors' chances of finding statistically significant results. Based on our discussion of levels of analysis concepts, we hope to provide guidance to empirical researchers who study e-ollaboration.

Creating a community history Web site is a way for technical communication practitioners, students, and teachers to improve their expertise while performing a valuable public service. Developers of this kind of Web site combine personal interest in the history and culture of their chosen communities with professional interest in a wide range of skills: for example, online research, Web site design, creation of artwork, photography, graphics editing, collaboration, professional/technical writing, as well as site publication and promotion. Technical communicators working on community history Web sites enjoy creative freedom that makes these projects especially engaging and fun. While learning about subjects of particular interest and improving professional skills, developers gain the satisfaction of trying to help communities increase civic pride and heritage tourism. Also, the technical communication profession benefits when its members demonstrate good citizenship to employers, other constituencies, and the public.

As a response to research about both the work space of professional writers and the pedagogy using workplace simulations, a professional writing course was adapted for a high-tech conference room equipped with electronic meeting tools. This experiment improved students’ learning of course content, which included collaborative writing strategies, project management, and teamwork; research methods; presentation and design skills; and organizational culture and professional development. Students also better understood workplace realities and distinctions between academic and workplace environments. In addition, the experiment facilitated students’idea sharing and communication as well as their preparation for transitioning to the workplace. The teaching experience was more creative and rewarding, too.

Abstract To assess how rhetoric is positioned in English and communications programs, I review surveys of undergraduate majors, including my own survey of a stratified sample of one hundred four‐year institutions. I also analyze the statements of purposes from varied departments. While discussions of rhetorical studies tend to be defined in terms of departmentalized disciplines, the relations between fields such as English and communications vary by types of institutions, with joint programs more common in smaller colleges and rhetoric and composition courses more pervasive in public institutions. Such situational factors need to be assessed in order to develop a more rhetorical stance on the collaborative capacities of rhetorical studies in English and communications. The pragmatics of the two disciplines differ in ways worth noting if rhetoricians in the two fields are to collaborate more productively.

The author suggests that Saul Alinsky’s concept of community organization, a theory of action devised for neighborhoods rather than for higher education, might offer a new model of service-learning, and describes the Community Educators’ Collaborative at Temple University as one example of how such a model might work.

Nicolases book, Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom , I am still marveling at the impressive array of writing-group contexts represented by the articles included in this edited volume. As a writing center director whose program has made several fledgling (mostly failed) attempts at facilitating group work, I began the book eagerly, expecting an authoritative prescription for structuring meaningful writing-group experiences. When no such prescription emerged in the reading, however, I quickly adjusted my expectations. At times frustrated and at others enchanted by the scrumptious complexity, I savored the book as a meal, one layered with flavors that enrich my appreciation of writing groups in all their manifestations.

Writing centers are sites around which folklore circulates. Staff meetings, classrooms, newsletters, and journals are filled with tales of individual and collective actualization, celebrating one-to-one teaching as deeply social, collaborative, and empowering. Legends from the writing center also speak to the tensions inherent in the spaces, reflecting divisions of tutoring as prescriptive versus directive, banking versus dialogic, and peer-driven versus expert-owned. Following their review of writing center theory, history, and practice, Paula Gillespie and Neal Lerner advise, "What is most important is to understand where our practices come from and to unravel the various influences on those practices" (154). Knowing these conditions of possibility makes for more effective tutoring, and this awareness also speaks to a politics about learning and the production of writers. Gillespie and Lerner describe commonplace mindsets about writing centers as garrets for skills -building and testing, as generative spaces for confidence and collaboration, and as critical arenas in which to problempose institutional and social discursive practices (147-150). For each domain, the tutorial and the social actors in and surrounding it are implicated in a certain identity politics. In the storehouse writing center, skill -building and knowledge transmission posit the writer as a vessel in need of filling, and identity becomes conferred as a sort of membership card or rite of passage. In the generative writing center, the writer emerges from social interaction, and identity becomes a negotiation of assimilation,

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John Hollowell, Michael P. Clark, Steven Mailloux, Christine Ross, Responses to "Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse:Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 329-334

Drawing on rhetorical genre studies and recent work in activity system theory, this study focuses on the collaborative development of a new written form, a municipal plan for protecting and managing natural areas. The author advances a twofold claim: (a) that the written plan is developed in the absence of a stable textual model and (b) that the text, as part of the context, functions, in turn, as a mediational tool for solving the rhetorical problem of audience resistance. Findings show that as participants reconfigure the project into successive cycles of activity, they create corresponding zones of proximal development. This study contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of the text-context relationship and to recent elaborations of genre as an activity system that help explain the relationship between genre and learning.

This paper summarizes three field experiments involving distributed collaborative writing in traditional educational settings creating a hybrid form of distributed education. One finding shows that specialized collaborative tools allowed for parallel work, group awareness, and coordination, providing substantial advantages over traditional word processors in distributed collaborative writing. However, it was also found that advanced collaborative writing tools alone did not provide optimal results in distributed collaborative writing groups; such groups also needed high levels of process structure, which can be delivered through carefully constructed scripts. Moreover, it was found that introducing face-to-face meetings in distributed collaborative writing work did not necessarily provide advantages over work that was performed in all-distributed settings. Given these findings, this paper concludes by discussing the contributions, implications, limitations, and future research possibilities for hybrid distributed education are discussed.

This article interprets technical communication research about sex differences according to social role theory, which argues that sex differences are enculturated through experiences associated with social positions in the family and the workplace. It reevaluates technical communication research about sex differences in communicative and collaborative styles in the classroom and the workplace and about the effects of the double bind that women experience in the workplace. The article concludes with a recommendation that theoretical frameworks explaining sex differences remain flexible and able to account for social change.

This article provides a cultural-historical analysis of dictation as a composing method in Western history. Drawing on Ong’s concept of secondary orality, the analysis shows how dictation’s shifting role as a form of literacy has been influenced by the dual mediation of technological tools and existing cultural practices. At the dawn of modernism, a series of technological, economic, and philosophical factors converged to promote silent forms of individual authorship over collaborative modes of dictation favored in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Similar changes are taking place today and may help reverse the dominance of silent authorship. If voice-recognition technologies continue to improve in the future, they may help professional communicators bridge the spoken and textual realms and effect changes in our attitudes toward authorship and orality.

Abstract This article argues that engaged "action research" can help professional writing researchers both develop new and interesting collaborative models and help our profession develop a greater relevance to those not reading our journals and attending our conferences. I outline one particular, localized approach in the hope that our troubles, struggles, and failures at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee can help others to develop their own programs and can further our discussion of community engagement.

Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present by Alan Gross, Joseph E. Harmon, Michael Reidy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 267 + x pp. Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, edited by Constant J. Mews, Cary J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003. 270 + viii pp. Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities: Issues and Options, edited by James A. Inman, Cheryl Reed, and Peter Sand. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. 419 + xxiv pp.

“Should we make our tape about police brutality and youth crime or about how to become a hip-hop star?” (23). For Steven Goodman, founder of New York’s Educational Video Center (EVC), this question reveals a conflict that low-income minority students face when representing their experiences in collaborative, inquiry-based video projects.

This article recounts how a communications and an engineering department developed a collaborative teaching venture—a linked writing course—to provide mentorship for students learning how to write lab reports.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Encouraging students to be more vocal members of the response sequence can assist teachers in writing stronger comments on student texts. The author conducted a small-scale study of students’ reactions to response formats, finding that students preferred formats that allowed teachers to elaborate on their comments, displayed teacher effort, avoided confusing comments, and actively involved students in the process.

While we have different methods of teaching, WAC teachers, writing tutors and teachers of EAP share a common goal: to help students learn how to write effectively across the curriculum. To do this, students have to be able to situate each assignment within the larger context of questions and discussions in their course, in order to understand the role of that assignment in inducting them into the discipline. This article demonstrates the importance, students, of discerning this academic purpose, and suggests some ways in which students can be helped to develop routines of interrogating their essay questions to discover the purpose behind the question. It concludes by describ- ing ways of mainstreaming this teaching in collaboration with discipline professors across the curriculum. Working with undergraduate students in an Australian arts faculty, every day I grapple with the problem of purpose in students' writing the disciplines: a problem shared, in universities around the world, by WAC teachers, writing tutors (like myself), and teachers of English Academic Purposes (EAP) who aim to prepare non-English-speak- ing-background students for the demands …(of) subject-matter class- rooms in English-medium universities (Stoller 209). The nature of our concerns varies, depending upon our role in the students' writing

Results are presented from an assessment of student perceptions of collaborative writing practices before and after taking an upper division professional writing class. While most of the classes introduced students to these writing practices, several did not. The assessment was both quantitative and qualitative. Whether or not they had prior experience in the classroom, all students generally reported that they are likely to seek out opportunities to use both peer review and collaborative writing processes once they enter the workplace. However, students who are exposed to these practices in a classroom setting are more likely to report that they intend to continue these practices in the workplace.

A three-year field study of 17 courses, part of an undergraduate degree in information systems, compared the process and outcomes of three modes of delivery: totally online via asynchronous learning networks, traditional face-to-face courses, and sections using a mix of traditional and online activities. There were no significant differences in perceived learning by students associated with mode of delivery. Group collaboration and access to professors was perceived to be highest in mixed-mode sections, while convenience was rated highest in the distance sections. For online courses, there was generally a significant relationship between the hypothesized mediators (active participation, motivation, collaboration, access to the professor, and convenience) and perceived learning. Overall, the results of this study show that outcomes of online courses improved when professors structured them to support the growth of a learning community, by being available online to interact with students, and by using collaborative learning strategies.

The paper argues for using specialized collaborative writing (CW) tools to improve the results of distributed, Internet-based writing teams. The key features of collaborative tools that support enhanced coordination and group awareness are compared to existing writing tools. The first Internet-based CW tool, Collaboratus, is introduced, and its group features are compared with those of Microsoft Word. Next, theoretical propositions, hypotheses, and constructs are formulated to predict outcomes of distributed groups that use CW tools. A four-week-long synchronous-distributed experiment then compares the outcomes of Collaboratus and Word groups. Innovative measures show that Collaboratus groups generally experience better outcomes than Word groups, in terms of productivity, document quality, relationships, and communication, but not in terms of satisfaction. The results buttress the conclusion that Internet-based CW teams can benefit from specialized collaborative technologies that provide enhanced coordination, group awareness, and CW activity support.

This article links failed reform to failed education through a case study of an annual collaborative revision of a program textbook in the Composition Program at the University of California at Irvine. Review of successive editions of the program’s Student Guide to Writing at UCI reveals a progressive retreat from the program’s pedagogical commitments and the reappearance of product-oriented instruction.

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Christine Ross, Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec., 2003), pp. 302-329

Recent scandals in the business community have alerted professional writing teachers to the importance of highlighting ethics in the curriculum. From former experiences in teaching courses emphasizing ethics, the authors have adapted the curriculum to include a limited discussion of ethical approaches and terms and assigned group writing projects that consider the effects of business on the broader community. As a result of the integration of this ethical component into the entire course, students learn major ethical approaches; gain a vocabulary of ethical terms they can apply in the business world; interrogate the larger questions of business and its interactions with the local, national, and international community; and engage in the kind of dialectical discussions that require critical thinking.

Forest management plans, written by natural resource professionals for private landowners, provide a useful mechanism for analyzing documents concerned with communicating information about natural resources. The documents suggest that maintaining a sharp distinction between the professionals and the lay audience leads to stylistic and structural problems that hinder clear communication and mediate against collaborative decision making, even when such collaboration is the goal. This article offers specific mechanisms for overcoming these textual problems.

This article is concerned with characterizing literacy activity as it is practiced in professional workplaces. Its starting point is activity theory, which grew out of the work of Vygotsky and has been subsequently elaborated in Russia and elsewhere. First, the authors propose that existing versions of activity theory are unable to account adequately for practical human activity in contemporary workplaces, and present a revised perspective that opens the way for new theoretical developments. Second, they elaborate two new constructs, task and work ensemble, and apply them to a short collaborative writing sequence collected in the field. Both constructs are seen to account in a substantive way for the structure of the composing activity carried out by the collaborators. They close with a discussion of the complementarity and theoretical advantages of the two constructs.

Abstract An intricate network of collaborative relationships surrounded and supported nineteenth‐century American women's public discourse. Antebellum women worked closely with families, friends, and hired help to create and deliver rhetoric, negotiate conflicting private and public obligations, accommodate gender norms, and construct “feminine”; ethos. However, despite collaboration's central importance to women's rhetoric, scholars currently lack a model that accounts fully for its many forms and multiple functions. This article introduces a new model of collaboration capable of explaining how and why this cooperative method offers marginalized groups their most effective means to the public forum in resistant surroundings.

Contrary to much recent scholarship, this essay argues that there is no such thing as a collaborative mode of literacy. Specifically, it takes issue with Andrea Lunsford and others who have called for a profound shift in the zeitgeist of composition studies, as though it were possible to transform students from competitive to collaborative writers. In a larger sense, though, the article is not about collaboration at all; rather, it uses the literature on collaborative writing to illustrate a certain kind of scholarly exaggeration, whereby composition reformers try too hard to distill practical lessons from interpretive categories.