Evaluation of a Collaborative Writing Project: Student Development of a Literature Review in Inter-institutional Teams

Written and oral communication, conflict resolution, problem solving, planning, and project management are all important skills that students need for success in the 21^st century.  A course project was designed to augment development of these skill sets and strengthen student learning through their inter-institutional collaboration on a shared, semester-long writing assignment. Undergraduate and graduate students from Oklahoma State University and Kansas State University taking HORT 5422 Flowering and Fruiting in Horticultural Crops and HORT 625 Floral Crops Production and Handling, respectively, collaborated in teams of two or three, with students from both universities on a team, to produce a literature review of crop growth and development in high tunnels. To facilitate project completion, five sequential instructional documents were developed. The first document required students to join Dropbox and add articles related to a crop category (fruits, vegetables, flowers or miscellaneous/other) assigned to their group. The second document had students pursue more detailed literature related to their crop category and add at least 10 more papers to their group folder. In the third document, students were to provide an introduction and summarize via bullet point statements relevant findings from the literature under the major topics of light, temperature, nutrition and miscellaneous/other. The fourth document called for students to synthesize and integrate across crop categories within each of the environmental areas. Each group was only responsible for integrating all crop statements for one major topic. The final document required all students to read through and edit a final combined version of the manuscript. Student assessment via pre- and post-survey instruments revealed that though students sometimes found the experience frustrating, their perceptions of group work and knowledge gain were positively influenced by the project.