By Jacob Steiss Why Support Online Synchronous Collaborative Writing in the Secondary Classroom?Our students live varied and complex literate lives outside the classroom. Adolescents write in online forums, create fanfiction in digital writing communities, and participate in literacy activities as community organizers and activists. One way we as educators can recognize the diverse and expanding literacies of adolescents is by providing diverse writing opportunities in the secondary classroom, for example, online collaborative writing. By implementing evidence-based practices to support online collaborative writing, educators can increase the engagement and relevance of classroom writing tasks, help students gain important communication skills to participate in 21st century work and civic life, and support students’ development of critical literacy skills essential for an information society.
The authors of this article, including the WRITE Center’s Dr. Jenell Krishnan, describe ways that teachers can incorporate synchronous (writing in real-time) collaborative writing in their writing instruction through a hybrid approach. This approach emphasizes face‐to‐face and online opportunities for students to write and learn from and with their peers. Such writing responds to evolving educational standards that recognize the capacity for collaboration through online platforms like Google Docs, the expanding definition of literacy (NCTE, 2020), and the need for 21st century skills. For example, the National Education Association highlights the importance of the “Four Cs” to be emphasized across content areas and through learning opportunities. Online Synchronous Collaborative Writing (SCW) addresses the 4Cs because students
Guest Blogger: Dr. Troy Hicks On July 1, 2020, I was fortunate enough to be invited to deliver a webinar titled “Designing Purposeful and Engaging Arcs of Writing Instruction in an Era of Remote Learning” through the National WRITE Center, co-sponsored by the National Writing Project, The recording is available below, and a “force copy” of the Google Doc handout (with an additional link to the slides) is available here.  A Screenshot from the Webinar There were a number of questions that came from the chat conversation that I didn't get to respond to in detail.
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WRITE Center: Writing Research to Improve Teaching and EvaluationThe research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305C190007 to University of California, Irvine. In 2025 the National Writing Project took over management of this website and project resources. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
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