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by PBworks16 years, 7 months ago
The Students are the Source
The definition of collaboration is the interaction among two or more individuals that can encompass a variety of actions, such as communication, information sharing, coordination, cooperation, problem solving, and negotiation. I never really grasped the concept of this word up until I took the English Composition class with Dr. Trey Conner. Unlike other classes, this structure of this class was developed to not only educate students about how to write, but to do so interactively. In this class we used the Wiki program, which Trey favored highly above Blackboard. The Wiki site enables students to blog freely and openly, but it also allows the students to read and respond to their fellow classmate’s blogs. My own definition of collaboration is two or more people working together to attain the same goal. In this class our goal was to grow as students and acquire many different writing concepts.
I must admit that I think each and every individual in the class grew tremendously since the beginning of the class, reason being that whenever two people are working to accomplish the same thing, there are nothing but positive results that occur. Just think, as many different people go about handling certain situations and assignments, they do so in different ways. For example, in the beginning of the course we were given individual assignments, however instead of being graded by the instructor our papers would be graded by other classmates. I personally preferred this type of feedback simply because the suggestions weren’t coming from a “textbook” instructor; instead I was getting feedback from my peers. Interacting with each other on the wiki let us know that we all had different types of writing styles. There were some of us who would go for the cut and dry approach while others would go for a more intellectual approach. When given an assignment, there wasn’t really a right or wring way to respond, you basically would just have to write a strong paper defending your standpoint. It was not necessary for people to agree with what you were saying, just for the reader of your paper to be able to identify your opinion.
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Right now there is a saying that goes as follows; Greatness plus Greatness equal Greater Greatness! This basically supports the theory of two heads work better than one. When a Denzel movie releases, it is almost a guarantee that its going to raise a lot of money its first week, however if there will be even more money raised if Halley Berry and Denzel both are featured in a movie. Reason being that each actor brings something new to the table, they have their own little flavor. We as students of the class each had our own little flavor of writing. Out of the current musical artists that are out right now, yes there are a lot of individual rappers and singers. However when two or more of those artist collaborate they increase the potential of producing a musical masterpiece. I class I believe we used the Grey album which consisted of the Beach Boys and Jay-Z. Here we had two different styles of music, but someone thought of collaborating some of their works and it actually sounded very well. Another example would be Jay-Z collaborating with Linkin Park; they had a very big hit a couple of years back. Two different styles of music that laid on the opposite sides of the spectrum form one another can produce spectacular results if they are willing to take a risk. This same way of thinking is what we practiced in this course. There were many different students who had very different styles of writing, but when they worked together or gave each other suggestions, they were able to strengthen each others papers. However, in comp class there aren’t just two heads, but instead there is a class full of heads. The wiki gives the students of the classroom a place to communicate and interact. The wiki works as a great source for a person who may not be as vocal as others in the class room, but the wiki might be a way for that particular person to express themselves.
To be honest with you, I really understand the wiki and its purpose. I thought that it was just a lame assignment that the teacher was using in order to keep us busy, but I actually started becoming a stronger writer. First I had to actually assert myself to do my part and take my assignments seriously, then I had to remain open minded as others student dissected my papers and critiqued them. There were times when I didn’t always get good feedback, but in the mist of being introduced to something different I chose to get defensive but instead take constructive criticism. That’s the beautiful thing about collaboration, when there are so many different voices of opinions, those different points of view or opinions just has to find some common ground and then combined. This course was definitely a collaboration course. That’s why I think that Trey was so enthusiastic about it. Because even though his class only met in the class twice a week, communication on the wiki was available at our finger tips seven days a week, twenty four hours a week.
The wiki method of interaction and collaboration also brought us closer as a class in general. We were able identify each and everyone’s style of writing and how they approached certain issues. My favorite writer personally was Drew, because he would go so in depth in his writing assignments. As opposed to other classes where only the teacher grades the writing assignments and becomes aware of the classmates writing capabilities, we were able to grow intellectually not only as individuals but as a class as a result of being able to learn from each others writing methods. So the wiki definitely made us better writers as a class, perhaps more so than if we would’ve been your average English class.
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