Answer:
For the past three decades, educators have recognized the value of learning collaboratively. Educators widely recognize that students do not learn well when they are isolated "receivers" of knowledge. Indeed, students must overcome isolation in order to learn to write. Collaborative learning exercises—such as peer review workshops, collaborative research assignments, group presentations, collaborative papers and discussion groups—are important components of our writing classrooms because they encourage active learning, giving students the opportunity to become more deeply engaged with their writing, and with one another.
WHY COLLABORATE?
Consider:
Collaboration helps students understand writing as a public, communal act, rather than as a private, isolated one. Many students write papers that make sense to them but that aren't clear or persuasive for others. Peer reviewers help students to understand that they aren't writing for themselves, but for readers.
Collaboration therefore helps student writers to develop a sense of audience. Too often students write only to please their instructors, whose expectations they rarely understand. Knowing that their peers will read their papers gives students a concrete sense of to whom they are writing, and why.
Collaboration helps students to better understand the conventions of academic discourse. When talking about their papers with their peers, students will learn where their readers stumble. They can also find out why. Often, these conversations lead to a better understanding of the writing conventions that the student writer has neglected or misunderstood.
Collaboration helps students realize that academic conventions are not simply arbitrary rules, but in fact reflect readers' expectations. If student writers want to be understood by an academic audience, they must heed the conventions of academic writing.
Collaboration gives students practice in analyzing writing. It is easier to see where a classmate's writing is going awry than it is to find flaws in one's own prose. It is also easier to critique student writing than it is to analyze the published writing that instructors often give their students as models.
