Connecting Susan Kleimann's Observations to Your Research
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| (p.56) Collaboration:"Writing in the workplace is a collaborative act. . ." | do you typically collaborate with others on your writing? | does your writer collaborate with others? If so, how? |
| (56) Hierarchies: "[C]ollaborative writing is both . . . horizontal among peers and vertical among unequals within the hierarchy." | if you ever collaborate in your writing process, is it among peers, or do you consult with people "above" you as well? | does your writer collaborate mostly with peers, or with "unequals" as well? |
| (57)The Organization: We "need to regard the organization as a dominant influence on its staff who write." | if you have done any sort of writing within an organization, did anything about the organization's "culture" influence how or what you wrote? | is there a particular workplace culture that influences in specific ways whether people write competitvely or collaboratively? |
| (58) A Review Chain: In "GAO, many people read report drafts . . . " | have you ever worked within a discernible chain of people who edited and reviewed your work? If so, was it hierarchical or collaborative? If one or the other, would a different way have worked better? | do forms of writing go through a discernible chain of reviewers? If so, can you tell what each reviewer reads and edits for (objectivity, or tone, or adherence to organizational principles, etc.)? Is this process collaborative or hierarchical? |
| (59) Interviews on Details of the Writing Process: Kleimann "probed writers or reviewers about the reasoning behind specific changes." | have you ever tried to explain to someone why you made some particular changes in your writing? If so, did the process of articulating your reasons for these changes help your writing in any way? | is it possible for you to ask your subject why he or she made particular changes in the drafting process? Also, if this writer does work collaboratively, do people discuss the reasoning for changes they want to make? |
| (60) Goals for Review: "Both divisions in this study share similar goals for review: to ensure that no errors are made in the details or in the interpretation of its details and that the report is an institutional report, balancing and representing the various GAO perspectives." | aside from simply making a "better" piece of writing, what have your specific goals been while editing various forms of writing? Would it have helped to spell out those goals directly while writing various projects? | as your subject, and, perhaps, other writers, edit a piece of writing, can they spell out for you what their goals are for carefully reviewing and changing the writing? |
| (63) Review Guidelines: "Division 2 has . . . no written guidance about functions, procedures, or rational for review. . . . Division 1, on the other hand, has distributed to all staff written guidelines explaining the purpose of review and the reasons for some procedures." | have you been expected to change your writing without being told specifically how to do so? If so, would such guidance have helped, or might it have stifled your creativity? | is your writer given any specific guidelines explaining the purposes, methods, and reasons for writing changes? If so, what form do these guidelines take? If not, do you think such guidelines would help? |
| (65) Meetings: For Division 1, since "much review involves honing the thinking and the presentations of the report from multiple perspectives, meetings allow staff to negotiate nuances and clarify meaning immediately." | if you have worked with others on a writing project, has meeting together to discuss the project, rather than working on the whole or parts individually, been beneficial? If so, in what specific ways? | if your writer works with others on writing projects, does he or she participate in group meetings to discuss a writing project? if not, might doing so help? |
| (68) Oral Exchanges: "Frequent oral exchanges increase the chance that people communicate with, rather than past, each other." | has it helped to talked to others about your writing projects as you do them? If not, again, do you think that articulating your ideas, as well as trying to write them down, could help? | does your writer work in social isolation, rarely talking with colleagues about writing work in progress, or does he or she frequently talk to others about it? |
| (69) Ownership and Responsibility: "A collaborative culture . . . emphasizes contributory expertise and thus produces a sense of ownership and responsibility." | if you have collaborated with others on writing projects in a horizontally structured working situation, did it make you feel a sense of ownership in the writing itself, and responsibility for it, more than you might have felt in an individualized, hierarchical working situation? | if your writer collaborates with others on writing projects, does he or she feel that working this way makes workers feel that they've made a genuine contribution to the writing? also, do the workers in the collaborative projects seem to feel more responsible for the quality of the work produced than they would in an individualized, hierarchical working situation? |
| (70) Expertise: When workplace writing is done collaboratively, each person's expertise "contributes to the shaping of the report [and] review becomes a collaboration among 'equal' experts." | if you have collaborated with others on writing projects in a horizontally structured working situation, did the process tend to draw out the various forms of expertise the others had? If not, how might this benefit have been encouraged? | if your writer collaborates with others, does this process tend to draw out the various forms of expertise the others have? If not, how might this benefit be encouraged? |