Processes and tasks in collaborative writing in engineering: research-informed views and pedagogical applications

Abstract

Writing plays a central role in the activities that engineers carry out both in academia and industry. Different from other disciplines, in engineering a considerable amount of writing takes place as collaboration between a group of individuals. Despite this recognition, research in collaborative writing (CW) in engineering is rather scant and the available studies are mostly theoretical in nature, with very little empirical evidence. This article reports on an empirical study that examined CW in four schools at a faculty of engineering at a university in the UK. It specifically looks at the processes and the tasks in which engineering students and professionals get involved when writing collaboratively. Based on the findings of the study, the article suggests a number of research-informed pedagogical practices for developing CW in engineering.

Keywords

• collaborative writing in engineering
• processes and tasks in collaborative writing
• pedagogical applications