Writing as a Team Effort

Reviewer: GM van de Water

MixedInk is a free collaborative writing tool that allows groups to weave separate contributions

Since students work simultaneously on a collaborative text, a non-linear narrative is most

into a jointly-constructed text. It has several useful features for managing a collaborative writing

suitable. Chaucers Canterbury Tales forms the inspiration for the following project, a

project. Multiple users can work on the same text simultaneously and the colour-coded tracking

Contemporary Canterbury Tales, which characterises or perhaps satirises contemporary

functionality allows teachers to track individual student efforts and provide feedback when

society. Each pair or group collaborates on the following four tasks. First of all, each team writes

necessary. MixedInk is a web-based program and requires no technical skills for implementation.

two sentences for the opening paragraph of the narrative, which describes the setting. Students

Figure 1 below shows the interface, which is user-friendly and self-explanatory, and, therefore,

need to ensure that their contribution transitions smoothly from the preceding text. Secondly,

little classroom time needs to be dedicated to explaining how MixedInk works.

each team writes a vignette characterising an existing person of their choice. This can be a
celebrity, a terrorist, a hero or their best friend. Thirdly, each team writes an action scene in

Collaborative writing (CW) differs from cooperative writing in that students share responsibility

which their character interacts with another created by one of the other teams. This part

for one, jointly-constructed text. This promotes a sense of co-ownership and therefore, students

requires two teams to work together. Fourthly, each team selects an action scene composed by

collaborate on all aspects of writing: content, structure and language (Storch 2005, p. 154). The

any of the other teams and writes a suitable ending to the narrative. The end result is a narrative

benefits for ELLs arise from two aspects of CW: collaborative scaffolding and languaging.

including various vignettes, several action scenes and alternative endings. The Contemporary

Collaborative scaffolding pools individual strengths and weaknesses. By working together,

Canterbury Tales should be published online with links to these components so that the audience

students draw on each others strengths, and, by assisting each other, ameliorate each others

can choose their own individual route through the narrative.

weaknesses. Consequently, students achieve a level of performance that is beyond their

individual level of competence (Ohta 2001, cited in Dobao 2012, p. 41). Furthermore, CW

References:

requires that students discuss solutions to language problems that occur during the writing

Doboa, AF 2012, Collaborative writing tasks in the L2 classroom: Comparing group, pair and

process. To this end, they formulate and test hypotheses, offer and assess new input, or correct

individual work, Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 40 58.

themselves or others (Swain 2006, cited in Dobao 2012, p. 41). Languaging, which is the use of
language in order to solve language-related problems, often results in correct solutions to

Storch, N 2005, Collaborative writing: Product, process and students reflections, Journal of

language problems as well as acquisition of new language knowledge (Dobao 2012, p. 41).

Second Language Writing, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 153 173.

Fig. 1: This screenshot shows the MixedInk dashboard, where projects are managed. This
software allows for simultaneous edits and has colour-coded tracking functionality that
allows teachers to track student contributions. MixedInk, accessed 31 March, URL:
http://www.mixedink.com/.