[as published in Ninth Conference on Computers and Writing Presentation Summaries. Ann Arbor: English Composition Board, 1993. 120-122]

"Collaborative Investigation" is a teaching method currently under development at a number of universities whereby students participate actively and meaningfully in the making of knowledge. In this process, students learn not only the "substance" of a discipline but are also enabled to gain an understanding of the ways in which that discipline (and, by implication, other disciplines as well) creates and exchanges knowledge through continuing dialogue -- oral as well as written -- between members of the discipline.

Students thus can move toward a broader understanding of what knowledge is and how it is created and transmitted, of research methods and the nature of scholarship. They can gain experience of collaborating with others in the creation and sharing of knowledge. And they can learn a great deal about the ways in which such activities are mediated by writing and about the kinds of writing characteristic of the discipline; further, they can gain a great deal of practice in writing in those and other ways. Most important, the practice in writing in which they participate is dialogic, and thus potentially engaged: texts are created in situations in which writers can have authentic audiences and authentic purposes.

It is a method which can be used in a wide range of disciplines. Currently, it is regularly employed in courses ranging from introductory literature to forest mensuration, from introductory courses in cognitive psychology to senior courses in religious studies, rhetoric, the history of psychology, and literary theory.

There are many variations in detail among the ways in which collaborative investigation is employed, according to the demands of the discipline and the preferences of the professor. But elements common across disciplines include the following:

• Rather than depending on lectures or a textbook, students conduct research  collaboratively and share the results of that research with each other, teaching each other  what they've learned, primarily through the medium of writing;
• Much of the work of the course is collaborative, in various ways, in that students do  research in groups or individually, research is shared and reports developed  collaboratively, and final products are written, edited and evaluated in cooperation;
• The teacher does not assume the primary role of central source of authoritative  information, but rather serves as a model of and source for investigative and scholarly  methods and strategies;
• Class time is typically used not for whole-class lectures or discussions, but for generation  of research questions (usually through successive modification of shared written  questions), written discussion of shared readings, strategy planning, small group editorial  work and drafting, and cross-questioning of existing drafts. Class sessions are regularly  canceled in favor of library research or group work.
• Evaluation in such a course is normally also a collaborative process, one in which  students acknowledge each other's contributions to their own learning, and in which (a)  their ratings of each other are instrumental in determining final marks and (b) their  comments on each other are mediated and passed on.

By sequencing introduction into these systems so that the simplest (electronic mail) comes first in the course, and by encouraging collaborative learning from the very beginning of the process, we largely circumvent problems often associated with learning to use computers and computer programs; learning to use the computer network becomes parallel to the other kinds of learning in the course.

This infrastructure supports a number of different activities:

• a great deal of the organization of the course work - task and assignment definition and  clarification, group organization, etc. - is carried out by electronic mail;
• collaboratively written research reports are produced through the word processor, read  and responded to by peers in cumulating files in a common subdirectory, and finally  revised for final publication;
• discussions (both organizational and substantive) occur on the bulletin board - and to a  lesser degree through the mail system - and written consultation with the teacher is  conducted through the mail system.
• normally, each course creates a cumulative, jointly edited "course book" or other  public, final text, which is often distributed outside the members of the class community
• student evaluation is conducted through an accumulation of files distributed by the  instructor through the mail system, and returned in the same way for editing,  compilation and redistribution
• evaluation of the course is conducted by establishing a file in the common directory and  inviting comments to be added to various sections of the file, marked off by suggestions  of topics or aspects of the course of particular interest.

• to report the substance of what had been learned in a cycle of research to others who  genuinely did not know and who have an authentic interest in knowing
• to ask substantive questions regarding the reports of others which may actually be  answered by those others, and to ask them in a concrete and persuasive way which will  constrain and shape the answers
• to define and propose a research project in such a way that others will not only be  persuaded that it is valuable, but will be persuaded to join in pursuing it
• to describe a literary work in such a way that useful and valuable understanding of the  work - its structure, shape, tone, etc. - is available to others who haven't read it
• to describe the character and importance of a work or writer in such a way as to persuade  others to read the work or the writer
• to engage in informal written discussions on the bulletin board, ranging in subject from  discussion of particularly literary works, computer network problems, to organization of  activities (for example, last month a class in eighteenth century literature organized a  "movie night" at which videos of The Beggar's Opera and Tom Jones were shown; virtually all  the organization of this occasion, from the first suggestion to the final scheduling and  arranging of who was to bring the tapes and the popcorn was done on the electronic bulletin  board, over a period of two weeks).
• to engage in written reflection on their own writing and their attitudes toward writing,  and how they have changed over the course of the year.

Further, and perhaps equally important, none is the form labeled by James Britten as "writing for the teacher as examiner"; none, in fact, is ever formally evaluated (though all are read in situations where what they say and whether it is said effectively matter, in the sense that they have immediate, practical consequences). Neither is writing commented on or corrected, except in situations where groups do final copy editing for publication.

Normally, a session in which this process was described would be comprised of three sections: exposition and explanation; discussion, exploration and clarification; and practical applications, with the final two sections doubling as demonstrations of how class sessions might be conducted, and as explorations of the ideas and their possible practical implications. As a twenty-minute presentation, however, I will primarily outline the process and present some examples of the kinds of writing development (and student reflections on the development) that occur in the course of one example of this sort of intensely dialogic "writing immersion" experience, the year-long course in Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature I conducted during the academic year 1992-93.