ClassInfo

The rhetoric, science, and technology of collaboration

Collaboration is a disciplinary assumption in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication. Theorists, researchers, and practitioners grapple with ever-changing modes and models for collaborative work in academia, industry, and with communities. In academia, new faculty face revised tenure code requiring "interdisciplinary" as opposed to "independent" research productivity. In industry, technical communicators must collaborate with engineers, subject matter experts, and programmers; and all must be adept at working with global virtual teams.

Despite the criticality of collaboration, it is often overlooked from PhD core curricula. "A survey of PhD level courses for a professional communication degree from around the U.S. yields an apparent observation: No PhD curriculum requires its students to collaborate with their advisor, faculty members, or other students on any sustained projects. Many programs encourage students to pursue these scholarly activities on their own initiative, but without any integrated support system to promote collaboration" (Tham, 2016).

This seminar will examine the rhetoric, science, and technology of collaboration. We will draw on theory, research, and practice from resources included on RSTC exam lists as well as from composition, rhetoric, technical communication, and related fields. Outcomes will include increased ability to articulate theoretical direction on collaboration; to conduct collaborative research with other researchers, practitioners in industry, and/or with community sites (public engagement); to design virtual spaces in support of collaboration; and to apply lessons gleaned from the rhetoric, science, and technology of collaboration to current composition and technical communication pedagogy.

Resources include (but are not limited to) the following:

Collaborative learning and the ‘conversation of mankind' (Bruffee)

Study of collaborative writing groups (Allen et al.)

Collaborative writing in industry (Lay & Karis)

Collaboration and concepts of authorship (Ede & Lunsford)

Collaboration in technical communication: A research continuum (Burnett & Duin)

Qualitative content analysis of collaboration in technical communication (Thompson)

Dynamics and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration (Gooch)

The rhetoric of collaboration (Lehmkuhl)

The rhetorical situation (Bitzer)

The myth of the rhetorical situation (Vatz)

Rhetoric and its situations (Consigny)

Community literacy and the rhetoric of public engagement (Flower)

Community, collaboration, and the rhetorical triangle (Allen)

Rhetorical work in the age of content management (Andersen)

What do technical communicators need to know about collaboration? (Burnett et al., & additional chapters from Selber & Johnson-­Eilola (Eds.) Solving problems in technical communication)

Professional and technical communication in a web 2.0 world (Blythe et al.)

Coordinating constant invention: Social media's role in distributed work (Pigg)

Context, text, intertext: Toward a constructivist semiotic of writing (Witte)

Moving the science of team science forward (Hall et al.)

Collaboration and team science (Bennett et al.)

Rhetorical technologies, technological rhetorics (Bernhardt)

Networked learning (Jones)