• Planning Digital & Team Projects
• Composing with Teams in Digital Environments
• Revising with Teams
• Historical Collaborative Revision

Planning Digital & Team Projects

One of the exciting aspects of developing digital projects—especially those using audiovisual, gaming, and visualization platforms—is letting your imagination run wild in ways that it might not with more traditional print-based assignments. However, the challenge of digital projects is tempering your creative ambitions in light of your schedule and abilities.

As you plan a multimodal project, especially one that involves a group of your classmates, you should complete these steps:

Identify any steps of the project planning process that will be difficult for you. Then, identify steps you will easily accomplish. #Analyze

1. Work as a group to identify individual strengths related to the project and determine ways work can be equitably distributed among group members (e.g., who has editing software installed on their computer? Who has experience running a video camera?). One group member should take on the role of project manager to keep everyone organized and ensure that all milestones are met. This practice works for all project work, but it is particularly valuable when you are working with an electronic platform that might not be familiar to everyone in the group.
2. Look carefully at the assignment milestones and due dates. Examine them in conjunction with your calendar; if you identify a date on which several assignments are due in a number of classes (a lab is due or an exam is scheduled), make sure that you leave yourself enough time to accomplish everything. Remember that professors are not always able or willing to give extensions. If your group is relying on you to complete your part of a project, you want to be sure you can manage their expectations of your participation.
3. Consider the platform or platforms with which you are working. Keep some basic rules of thumb in mind. For example, one minute of edited video can require more than an hour of filming and many more hours of editing time. Programming even a simple video game demands a lot of execution time, even from group members who are familiar with programming.
4. Build time into your schedule for peer learning. You may be a whiz at podcast production, but the other members of your group may be interested in learning how to use the software as well. Share what you learn across the group so that everyone’s knowledge is improved.
5. Work with your instructor throughout the project development process to be certain that the work you are doing aligns with the learning objectives and that you are meeting self-imposed and instructor-identified milestones. Performing periodic assessments like these increases the likelihood that your project will be both complete and successful.

When experimenting with media applications, especially those with which you and your classmates are not experts, concentrate on using the software to create a unique and effective message rather than a glitzy product. Manage your own expectations as well as those of your fellow group members and your instructor. Creating a shorter work (especially with audio, video, or computer programming) that is polished and speaks directly to the learning outcomes for the assignment is better than creating an unfinished longer piece because you ran into unexpected obstacles and out of time.

Composing with Teams in Digital Environments

Online collaboration tools have made working in groups to complete class assignments much simpler. Now you can meet with your classmates to brainstorm ideas during a video chat and then simultaneously write and edit a document in Google Docs, all without leaving your dorm room. Other collaborative tools like Dropbox, which allows you to upload and download documents, and Zotero, which allows you to form collaborative groups for research and source organization, facilitate working together remotely or together in the classroom. However, working in a group in an electronic environment can be very different from working independently and can pose some unique challenges. To work effectively with your peers on electronic and online projects, remember to consider the following guidelines:

• Establish a protocol for communicating with your group members at the first meeting. You might all agree that email is the preferred way to keep in touch or that using text messages is easier. Make sure to choose a method that all group members have access to and are comfortable with. Many software applications are device or platform specific. Whichever method you choose, be sure to set up clear guidelines about how you will communicate and define what constitutes a timely response.
• Similarly, at your first meeting you should also establish what electronic tools or platforms you prefer to use for your collaborative work. Rather than having everyone share individual documents via email, set up a Google Drive folder to which everyone can contribute (to do this, you need to have a Google account). You can agree to work on the document asynchronously (on your own time) or synchronously (by setting a time to meet “in” the document). If you work on the document at the same time, you will be able to see each other editing the document, and you can chat about the process in the sidebar chat room. If you are working in a different environment—for example, if you are creating a Web site or a blog—you should ensure that everyone has editorial access to the site and can work on it independently; then you might choose to have everyone track additions and modifications in an editable document. At the same time, you should all also decide how you will connect to discuss your progress on the project. Face-to-face meetings are often preferable and more effective, but when that is not possible you might choose to chat on Canvas, GroupMe, or Zoom.
• As you set goals and assign tasks, decide as a group where you will save drafts and how you will name documents (come up with a consistent file-naming system), how you will keep track of edits, and who will be responsible for turning in deliverables. The strategies for implementing naming conventions and version control will help you make these decisions.
• When you are working together in a digital environment, remember to pay attention to the basic rules of netiquette. Always communicate with your group members as if you were in the same room. Remember that sometimes tone and nonverbal aspects of communication can get lost in online communication. Be sure to keep track of the work you have done and save multiple drafts. If you are editing someone else’s work, save a backup of the original first, in case any of the group members disagree with the changes you have made. Using Track Changes in a Word document or editing text in a wiki allows you to keep track of the document’s history.

Revising in Teams

Giving and receiving feedback is a collaborative process, even for individual projects. On an individual project, you should give and receive feedback from others about how well your artifact meets your goals and the project assessment criteria. Testing your work with a colleague or friend is a great way to make sure your communication is clear and effective, and critiquing what other people have produced can give you ideas to improve your own projects. However, many of the projects assigned in any of your Georgia Tech courses will be team-based projects. Team projects afford you even more opportunities to create and receive feedback during every stage of your project’s development. Whether each team member has a specific role or the team works collectively, feedback is essential to meeting your project goals; use your team as a built-in peer review group, providing one another with feedback and advice throughout the project. In a team project, you should gather feedback from and give feedback to individual team members at multiple stages including brainstorming, drafting, and final polishing. You should also work collectively as a team to give feedback to and receive feedback from other teams to refine your team’s overall project. Soliciting internal feedback from your team members and external feedback from other teams helps you revise to make sure your final artifacts are cohesive and unified.

Although feedback is an essential part of any collaborative process, critiquing or revising a teammate’s work can be difficult. You don’t want to offend or upset a classmate, but your grade may be partially dependent on the work of others, so you have a stake in the final result.

This section offers strategies not only for developing an atmosphere in which to share feedback with teammates but also for learning to accept feedback professionally, gracefully, and gratefully. One of your goals should be to develop collaborative strategies that prevent interactive problems from occurring or that resolve them quickly and effectively if they do occur.

When team members feel comfortable critiquing and revising one another’s work, the team draws on everyone’s strengths and insights, producing a superior product. Developing a strong revision process and a team culture in which constructive critique is welcomed and encouraged allows your team to focus on what is best for the project without worrying about hurt feelings or who “owns” a particular section of the project.

Developing a Culture in Which Constructive Feedback Is Encouraged: The dynamics of your team greatly influence the effectiveness of the feedback that you give and receive. In the workplace, you will often be called on, both in person and electronically, to engage in semi-public critique of others’ work. Developing strategies for giving feedback can make you a sought-after colleague; graciously accepting and implementing feedback can make you a desired teammate. However, before you can create effective, focused feedback you need to intentionally create an atmosphere within your team that allows feedback to be both given and received; you must be brave enough to be critical about the work of others and brave enough to accept feedback yourself without becoming defensive. Keep in mind that being brave does not mean acting without tact, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity.

Historical Collaborative Revision

Did you ever consider that important historical artifacts were at one point living documents—drafts that were revised over and over? Look up the U.S. Declaration of Independence to remind yourself of the language. Then do an Internet search for <original rough draught of the Declaration of Independence> (with the original spelling!). Your search should locate the Library of Congress reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson’s initial draft compiled by Professor Julian Boyd. The draft shows the text before it was revised with feedback from other members of the committee and Congress. Consider how comparing the original manuscript to the final version illustrates the collaborative process of feedback and revision, showing many places where words and phrases were changed. The document underwent a dramatic revision of its language.

Here are four steps your team can follow to develop a culture in which constructive feedback is encouraged:

1. Build revision and feedback into the task schedule. Creating a task schedule that includes time to comment on or revise one another’s work not only encourages team members to give feedback but also helps them accept feedback as part of the necessary work that goes into a successful collaborative document. If writers know that other team members are required to provide suggestions for change (or are required to make revisions), they do not take these suggestions or revisions personally. Scheduling revision and feedback into the task schedule creates a team culture in which constructive feedback is simply part of completing the project, not a negative reflection on anybody’s work.

Recall an unsuccessful or stressful group project. How did the feedback process (or lack of one) affect the outcome? #Remember #Evaluate

2. Decide on a revision process and follow it. This chapter describes two basic models for revision: feedback and direct revision. Many teams use a combination of these two methods. For instance, a team might use feedback at the beginning of a project to provide global suggestions for a writer and then switch to direct revision at the end. After considering the advantages and disadvantages of these methods, your team should decide how to handle revision at various stages of the project and create a task schedule that reflects this decision.

3. Use writing software that keeps a history of revisions. This chapter describes three software tools that help with collaborative authoring by tracking all the changes made to a document. These tools allow one team member to revise another member’s work while still preserving the original copy. They also make it easy to undo revisions that the team disagrees with and to offer provisional changes that can easily be reversed. The team can use the software to compare different versions of a document and to discuss the pros and cons of individual changes.

List ways your team might establish and enforce guidelines for revision. Then, compare them to identify the most effective ones. #Identify #Evaluate

4. Include a statement about the importance of revision and feedback in the team contract. Once your team decides on a revision process, you can note this in a team contract along with a statement acknowledging that the team agrees that providing honest and constructive feedback is essential to a quality project and that all team members agree to provide thorough feedback on one another’s work to the best of their abilities.

What software tools have you already used for collaborative projects? List each program’s advantages and disadvantages to help you select your tools. #Remember #Create

Before You Start: Ground Rules for Revision ​ ​When writers submit work to teammates for direct revision or comments, they should first take a moment to clarify the state of the draft and the goals for revision. Initially, you should tell the reviewer(s) the state of your draft. Simply put, where are you in the overall process? Do you see the draft as nearly final, needing only minor editing and polishing? Or is it very rough, needing major reorganization and content changes? Have you submitted a draft missing major sections, with plans to add those sections later? Whenever you hand off a draft to others for comment or revision, you should provide a brief statement summarizing the state of the draft and outlining the types of changes you believe the draft needs. This explanation helps teammates gauge their feedback. For instance, if a teammate believes that a draft needs major changes but you see it as close to finished, that teammate should expect some resistance and, therefore, should provide detailed justification for the proposed changes.

Team contracts help members define appropriate behavior. Define elements of feedback etiquette that lead to effective team projects. #Understand #Evaluate

Second, you need to clarify the goals of the revision or feedback. If the draft is very rough, sentence-level editing would be a waste of time because entire sections may be deleted or entirely changed during the revision process. If the project is nearing the final deadline, seeking or offering major suggestions or revisions may be inappropriate. Taking a moment up front to agree on the goals for your feedback can help your team use its time more effectively. Reviewers and coauthors need to make sure that they understand the goals of the project as a whole before they respond to the writer. Thus, before responding to or revising a draft, teammates should take time to review the assignment instructions to ascertain what the final product should look like.

CHECKLIST: Giving Feedback During the Initial, Rough Stage

Use this checklist to help you develop your feedback once you’ve clarified that this is the rough draft and your goals are to identify global changes.

• Begin with praise. In your discussion with the writer, note one or two things that this draft does really well—even if all you can say is that the draft does a good job getting some ideas on the table.
• Identify/fix oversights. Look for parts of the text that do not meet the assignment requirements or do not match what the group decided on.
• Suggest/add new material. What else could be included that would strengthen this draft?
• Note/revise misleading or inaccurate information. Look for places where the information included is presented in a misleading way or is simply wrong.
• Suggest/implement alternative organizations. Do you think the organization could be improved? Would you recommend reordering some of the sections? Or creating new headings to make the material easier to skim? Should the recommendations be in a bulleted list rather than in paragraph form? Should any tables be reorganized to better communicate the data’s message?
• Identify/resolve inconsistencies in content and argument. Look for inconsistencies in the information and arguments included. You can address inconsistencies in formatting or vocabulary in later drafts.

Providing Effective Feedback ​If you have been assigned to provide written feedback to a teammate or directly revise a draft a teammate has prepared, you should take time to provide thoughtful suggestions. You don’t have to be certain about every suggestion you propose. After all, other people are commenting as well, and the team can decide later which suggestions are good ones. However, you should be constructively critical of the draft. This constructive criticism is key to creating a strong final project and is a major part of teamwork.

Before you provide feedback or make revisions on a draft for a class assignment, make sure you completely understand the project’s requirements:

• Review the assignment instruction sheet. Make a checklist of the criteria for the assignment. Then read the draft and compare it against this checklist.
• Check against the grading rubric. If the instructor has distributed a grading rubric (a sheet that lists the evaluation criteria for the assignment), carefully check your team’s document against this rubric to make sure that all the criteria are met.
• Review the team contract. Make sure you understand the main goals that the team has set forth in the contract.

Because writers often have difficulty seeing shortcomings in their own writing, someone other than the original writer(s) needs to check the artifact for completeness and accuracy. Artifacts always benefit from having a fresh set of eyes review them.

CHECKLIST: Giving Feedback During the Final, Polished Stage

• Begin with praise. Note one or two things in this draft that are improvements over the previous draft.
• Identify/fix oversights. Look for parts of the text that do not meet the assignment requirements or do not match what the group decided on.
• Note/revise misleading or inaccurate information. Look for places where the information included is presented in a misleading way or is simply wrong.
• Identify/resolve inconsistencies in content, organization, vocabulary, and formatting. Look for inconsistencies not only in the arguments and information included but also in the organization, vocabulary, and format. Does the heading style change from one part of the document to another? Does the document use inconsistent terminology for the same idea? Does the document have any unexpected changes in the font or formatting?
• Suggest/implement alternative formatting. Do you think a different type of graph or table should be used? Would you recommend a different heading style or different font throughout?
• Correct grammar and style. Fix grammatical errors, wordy sentences, or awkward phrases.

Once you understand the project’s requirements and have reviewed the draft, you are ready to give feedback or implement revisions. Depending on how far along the project is, you can use the checklist preceding this section for initial rough drafts or the one following for polished drafts to develop professional, responsible feedback for others.

Responding to Feedback & Making Good Revisions When you are given a group assignment, you will probably receive an explanation of how the group component will be graded. Some instructors will assign the same grade to everyone involved in the project; others may assign grades based on the final product and factor in each student’s individual contribution/participation. Especially when all team members will receive the same grade, you need to take time to review, edit, and revise all elements of the project to ensure that the quality is consistent throughout the work; remember, you will all be responsible for the mistakes that any one group member makes.

What approach is your instructor using to evaluate your collaborative projects for this course? #Understand

As a group, you might want to establish how you will review and assess each other’s work; for example, using the Review feature in Microsoft Word is effective for written documents. One tactic is to use a peer review session to look for problems or omissions in your project: ask a classmate to review your work and give feedback in written or oral form. If you will be graded both on the project as a whole and on your individual contribution/participation, be sure to ask your group members to evaluate your individual work as well. Doing this evaluation midway through the project gives you time to improve your performance if necessary.

What nonverbal cues is the woman in the red sweater jacket using to show she’s paying attention? How does she make her collaborator feel valued? #Analyze

When you collaborate on a group project, you should also consider how each group member will be credited and to whom the project belongs as a piece of intellectual property. In most classes, collaborative work will belong to the group as a whole, but sometimes individual members may wish to divide up the work and claim ownership of their respective sections. You may choose to identify the authors/creators of each part of the project on the artifact itself (for example, in an “About” page on a Web site or blog).

The ability to accept feedback represents a high level of professionalism that, as a student, you may not yet have had the opportunity to develop. A few situations might make giving or receiving feedback remarkably uncomfortable:

1. You ask for feedback and really need it, but the reviewer gives you inappropriate feedback (e.g., too vague, inaccurate, or impossible to implement in the available time). Consider following up with the reviewer to ask the person to provide details to support the generalizations. If that doesn’t work, find another reviewer to provide a second opinion.
2. Part way through a project that you’ve spent a great deal of time on you get feedback recommending a major overhaul. You’re devastated by the feedback—and resistant to the advice. Instead, consider how the audience for the project will react if you don’t implement the recommended revisions. Be grateful that you have a reviewer who is sufficiently invested in your project’s success to provide substantive feedback, even if it’s advice you don’t want to hear.
3. You’ve spent a good deal of time providing detailed feedback, and the author does not appreciate it. You send your feedback to the author, who rejects it and throws a temper tantrum. Unfortunately, the reality is that not everyone behaves professionally; however, you should always strive to be professional and mature, regardless of the actions of your collaborators or colleagues. If you need to respond to the author after the tantrum, make sure your response is professional.
4. You encounter people who are unkind in their feedback. You’ll need to work with them, but you can model appropriate professional behavior and not respond as they do. The following techniques can help you accept feedback to improve your work for the intended audience rather than react emotionally, based on your connection to the piece as its author:

• Count to 10. Before responding to feedback, give yourself a chance to recover from your initial reaction.
• Ask the person why he or she made this suggestion. You may find that you and the other person agree more than you originally thought or that the person misunderstood or misinterpreted something.
• Understand criticism. Before accepting or rejecting feedback, repeat back the criticism, the rationale, and the proposed solution (if presented), and then ask the person to confirm that you understood him or her correctly.
• Receive comments by email. If you have trouble accepting feedback in face-to-face situations, ask group members to use email to give their comments and suggestions. This gives you a chance to react to these suggestions in private and gives you time to tone down your initial reactions.

Responding to feedback may be one of the most difficult parts of working on a team. When your teammates offer feedback or revisions, do not respond defensively. If someone notes a problem, assume that some sort of problem exists—even if that person has mislabeled the problem or presented an incorrect solution. Do not reject any feedback until you have considered it from all angles.

Becoming a more capable collaborator requires you to develop several characteristics that are not immediately obvious: awareness of the constraints that might exist because of time and/or personality; familiarity with and ability to use digital tools; ability to give and receive productive feedback; and ability to use a workable process and to create and stick with a workable schedule. Set yourself the goal of becoming the teammate everyone respects and appreciates. Accomplish this goal by carefully and thoughtfully managing your individual and team projects. Establish clear group guidelines and be graceful, grateful, and professional as you work with others to transform your project development processes from an anxious mess to a confident, collected build to project success. Don’t overlook assembling, managing, and critiquing your technologies and your team as critical components of any composing process.