What are the disadvantages of collaborative writing?

Answer 1

The advantages and disadvantages of collaborative writing depend on what the purpose of your writing project is. People write for different reasons and to produce different kinds of products.

Sometimes the purpose of writing is to produce knowledge, such as the kind of writing one finds in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. In such cases, collaborative writing can be very useful because the combined knowledge of many people can be aggregated, and the smarter people in the group can correct the errors of members who are less smart.

Sometimes the purpose of writing is to produce 'art' or some other kind of 'beautiful', 'expressive', or 'persuasive' text. In these cases, collaboration can also be useful, but it is much more difficult to manage because the focus is not just on the information contained in the text but on the way the text is put together.

Finally, sometimes the purpose of writing is to produce relationships. For example, we might write a love letter (email? SMS txt?) to our girlfriend in order to create a good relationship with her. This kind of writing is naturally collaborative because you are collaborating with the person you are writing to, and they often respond with another text, which you later have to respond to. The desire to build relationships can also be part of larger collaborations such as when people post on blogs or forums.

For some reason, collaborative writing in school does not seem to work as well as it does on blogs and other online venues. There is a good reason to try to get students to do group projects since most of the writing they will do in the workplace will probably be in groups. Most students, however, don't like to work in groups.

Some of the Difficulties of collaborative writing projects are:

1. creates a Free Rider problem

2. highly depends on intrinsic motivation from all participants

3. Demands responsibility for the process

Here are some ways teachers can improve their group assignments to make them as fun as collaborative writing online is:

1. Educate about leadership in flat hierarchy groups. Perhaps integrate this into the task

2. Let the students actually use some of these internet tools

When there are different views or ideas in the group, people have to disccuss and compromise to reach the common direction. This helps eliminate some errors. However, some potential sparkling view points may also be eliminated, for profounding theories might looks silly or unacceptable at the first place.

So collaborative writing might not encourage creativity to some degree.