We particularly like to use groups when students have done enough reading and note-taking to share their rough ideas for a paper with each other . Collaboration Students can also be encouraged to pool their efforts by working on a research project collaboratively. Again, they have often had bad experiences with poorly managed collaborations, but, with careful planning and clear guidelines, collaborations can work. In the workplace in many fields, much work is done in teams working together. In the fall of 1997, teachers' groups criticized the Westinghouse Science Fair competition for celebrating isolated achievement.
Science is done in teams.
An engineering professor we know, Karl Smith, organizes his civil engineering courses around project management teams. The same is true in many other workplaces, including technical writing, law, health care, arts organizations, and government offices. The ultimate in collaborative writing is the collectively written paper. We have found that this approach takes a significant investment in class time because we teach on an urban campus with many commuting students who find it difficult to meet outside class for collaboration. The marvels of electronic mail and group list-serves can reduce this problem, but students must have easy access to computers.