Collaborative writing refers to projects and processes where written documents are created by several people together. In some projects there is an editor or an editorial team, but in many cases working is coordinated and moderated by the authors themselves. In true collaboration, all contributors have equal rights and abilities to add, edit, and remove text. The writing process becomes a mutual task, where each change prompts others to make more changes.
It is important for the group to have a specific and clear goal in mind as well as a good method of discussion and communication, especially if disagreements arise.
Collaborative writing is successful when each participant is able to make a unique contribution toward achieving a common vision or goal statement. It is important for each participant to feel that he or she has a significant contribution to make to the achievement of goals. Collaborative writing can bring about outcomes that are of higher quality than those produced by individuals. However, writing with others also makes the writing task more complex.
In education, collaborative writing is a method to promote collaborative learning. Writing with others is a demanding social and cognitive process where learners are required to communicate, argue, assess, negotiate and merge different ideas and knowledge into a coherent presentation. In working life, collaborative writing is a means to get people engaged into team work towards a shared goal.
Collaborative writing can be put in practice by using some network-based collaboration tool. There are multiple different tools available also in the internet for free. The basic social media tool for collaborative writing is wiki. Some of the most popular and widely used are Titanpad, GoogleDocs and WikiSpaces.
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