MM9 Planning your project

MM9-b: Collaborating effectively with others

MM9-bCollaborating effectively with others

Working in a pair or in a group can change your composing process—how you go about brainstorming, drafting, researching, and revising. The old saying is that “two heads are better than one,” and composing with a group can be enriching. Collaborative work gives you an opportunity to explore ideas and practices that your peers bring to the project. It’s also valuable practice for work you will do outside of school. Many professional projects are done in teams.

Collaborating effectively takes practice. It helps to pay attention to how you best work alone and how you best work with others. Here are a few important tips for working with a partner or a group:

Do the work together, and learn from each other. Sometimes students look at collaborative work as just a matter of divvying up tasks (for instance, one person does the research, another does the writing, and another does the designing and production). Managing a project in this way can result in a piece of work that looks somewhat like Frankenstein’s monster—lots of pieces stitched together into a messy whole. Stronger, more coherent work is the result of people truly collaborating and working together on every aspect of a project. The process of doing so allows group members to learn from one another’s strengths, and, in turn, everyone in the group becomes a stronger, more capable composer.
Organize yourselves, and stay on task. Functioning well as a group means checking in often and planning together. Three ways to keep your group focused and make progress are to set up specific meeting times, to have someone take notes when you meet as a group, and to make sure everyone knows who’s doing what for the project.
Know your own strengths, and be ready to admit your weaknesses. One way to start, especially if you’re working with classmates you don’t know well, is to think about how you typically like to function in a team or a group. What are you good at? Individual members can assess their strengths by using a questionnaire (see the following checklist). The responses on the questionnaire can help you get to know each other and start a conversation about how to move forward.

Assessing your strengths as a collaborator

I am good at being a team organizer.	yes	no	kind of
I am good at being a team member.	yes	no	kind of
I am good at communication (asking good questions and facilitating discussions).	yes	no	kind of
I am good at thinking about the big picture (staying focused on the main idea or goal of the project).	yes	no	kind of
I am good at thinking about small details (completing individual tasks and keeping track of smaller parts of the project).	yes	no	kind of
I am good at doing research (performing Web searches, gathering information from library databases, and conducting surveys or interviews with people).	yes	no	kind of
I am good at design work (working with or creating images, or thinking about layouts and color schemes).	yes	no	kind of
I am good at writing (brainstorming, drafting, and editing written materials).	yes	no	kind of
I have good technology skills (creating basic Web pages, making slide show presentations, and doing some work with video).	yes	no	kind of