The following activities are designed to facilitate group writing projects and help student develop collaboration skills.

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Activities

Collaborative Project Weekly Self-Assessment Form

This activity, in which students describe and evaluate their contributions to group work, helps group members hold themselves and one another accountable during extended collaborative activities, such as the Collaborative Analysis Assignment. This prompt-guided assessment worksheet also teaches students how to perform critical self-reflection—a skill that’s integral to both the Performance Review Assignment and professional employment.

Human vs AI Simplification Activity

In this group activity, students revise a paragraph about the Blind Pig and vote on anonymous submissions, including a surprise version written by ChatGPT. The exercise encourages discussion on what makes writing engaging and the affordances and constraints of AI programs.

SWOT Report Redesign Activity

This revision/redesign activity develops students’ business design skills, revision acumen, and genre analysis. In it, students are provided a sample SWOT report that fails to adhere to many design principles of a business document. Students then apply their understanding of rhetorically effective and formally normative business document design to revise the sample report. Students are asked, however, not to alter any content within the document; this exercise focuses only on design elements, thereby teaching students how to engage in element-specific revision.

Wikipedia Activity

In this collaborative, in-class activity, students work together to compose an annotated bibliography in which they trace and evaluate the quality of a Wikipedia article’s references. This activity develops students’ ability to critically evaluate sources/research based on multiple criteria, including but not limited to peer review process, source medium, and author qualifications. This introductory credibility-evaluating activity eases students into the research process by providing basic prompts to guide their assessment.

Writing Groups Meeting Activity

This synchronous activity asks students to meet in a group once a week throughout the semester. During these meetings, students work on upcoming major assignments and—to keep them on task—collaboratively fill out an accompanying worksheet. Students then turn in their completed worksheets to their instructors at the end of each group meeting.

SWOT Brainstorming Team Activity

This “low stakes” synchronous activity asks students to collaboratively analyze an example company in preparation for the the Collaborative Analysis. This activity helps students get a sense of how their team might work together prior to composing their Team Charter.