Because writing is a form of communication, it is widely regarded as a social process, one that is iterative, and that to be effective, benefits from an interactive process. This means that there is a continual refinement process between stages, where attention to audience and purpose are a crucial part of the process (and not something to avoid, or a sign of failure). Like many other skills, feedback is essential to progress from novice to expert. Throughout UN 1015, there will be structured opportunities to receive and give feedback throughout multiple stages of the writing process.
Many students have had experience in their previous education with different types of reader feedback configurations. In this section, we distinguish between different types of peer reading and response activities.
As we have distinguished in Chapter 4, composition scholars note that writing processes take place in multiple stages, usually iterative and recursive (meaning they take place multiple times, sometimes the same activity in a single text). “Peer review” or “peer revising” focus on higher order concerns—for example, the organization of the piece; the effectiveness of the content; and how and whether the text meets the needs of the reader/audience and fulfills the purpose of the writing task. In peer review, readers are focused on the text and their experience of it as readers: does it fulfill the expectations for the writing task?
Peer editing would be appropriate at the stage that a piece is being finalized for submission or a later stage of review. In a recursive writing process, it doesn’t make sense to focus on correcting sentence-level issues (style) or lower-order concerns like punctuation and mechanics in earlier stages like peer review. Editing before revision would be like painting a room before you’ve finished putting up the walls. Hence, it would be sort of like painting all the pieces of a machine before you know which pieces will even be part of the final creation. Editing should be reserved for later stages of a process. This is where you are concerned with proofreading your peer’s document to polish it for publication.
Becoming a confident writer also requires becoming a confident reader. The effectiveness of review is directly related to the reading and writing skills you are able to draw upon while you engage with a text and its writer. In this section, we provide strategies and tools that lead to effective peer review sessions.
For each peer review session, you should complete or update an author’s note—these are “meta-documents” where you “pull back the curtain,” so to speak, on the processes you used to complete the text and where you engage in an assessment of your progress on this literacy task. In this context, “meta” means referring back to itself. So, an author’s note is a meta-document that refers back to the document you’ve written. Writing an author’s note can help you develop metacognitive knowledge. It’s important to note that metacognitive knowledge is made up of two components, as discussed in the Handbook of College Reading and Study Strategies:
"Vacca and Vacca (1994) proposed that deep processing of complex material requires two types of knowledge. Metacognitive knowledge, or 'the ability to think about or control your own learning' (p. 47) is one type. Metacognitive knowledge, in turn includes self-knowledge and task knowledge. Self-knowledge is the knowledge students have about themselves as learners. Task knowledge is knowledge about available skills and strategies. Formative assessment also involves self-regulation, or 'the ability to monitor and regulate comprehension."
Author’s notes are a structured opportunity for you to practice this kind of cognitive work, expressing what you have learned (or already know) about yourself as a writer, as well as what specific strategies you have used in completing this specific writing task.
Your author’s note will include the following elements:
Peer review is most effective when the following conditions are in place:
Your section instructor may use variations on this process for the purposes of getting reader feedback from classmates.
Individual meetings (or conferences) with your writing instructor is a core practice in composition pedagogy, based on decades of research in the field that demonstrates writers benefit from individualized feedback (in multiple ways)—from talking about their writing process and their thinking, to interacting with readers about their goals and purpose in the text. This section makes recommendations for how to make the most of your instructor conference and what typically takes place during a conference.
Before your conference meeting, your instructor will provide a way for you to schedule a meeting time, either through a Google document, a form, spreadsheet, or other scheduling tool. Prior to the conference, make sure you understand what the scope and focus of the meeting will be. For example, your instructor might ask you to complete a pre-conference planning worksheet, generate goals and questions, or do some other preparatory work.
It is recommended that you have a way to take notes, either on a device or in a notebook, where you can keep a record of the conversation, including any suggestions or feedback you receive from your instructor. You might also have any prepared questions that you hope to discuss with your instructor. A conference is a great opportunity to clarify your understanding of expectations for an assignment or activity in the course, as well as any larger questions you have about your work in college.
It’s a good idea after the conference meeting to make any notes to yourself about what you will do next with the assignment/writing task you discussed with your instructor. This might include a work plan, concept map, revision list, or other documentation of the outcome of the meeting.
Modalities: Your instructor may require conferences that are in-person, online via Zoom, or offer you a choice of modality. If you are meeting online with Zoom, please be in a quiet location where you can have your camera on and interact with your instructor. In person, you will meet with your instructor in a public location on campus, likely your instructor's office, a conference room, or your regular classroom.
You should use the Writing Center often throughout your many courses at Michigan Tech. Contrary to many students’ beliefs about writing centers, ours is not just for students who are struggling with their writing in obvious ways. Any student can make an appointment to come in for any writing they might be doing, at any stage of the writing process, and regardless of where they are at in their own writing journey. Whether you’re coming in with just some notes and an assignment sheet, a rough draft, or you have a close-to-complete draft, the Writing Center staff and peer-to-peer coaches are there to offer friendly advice, a second set of eyes, writing expertise for fine-tuning your work, and will help you consider which next steps might help you better meet your writing goals.
Our Writing Center peer-to-peer coaches come from a broad range of majors—Biomedical Engineering to Geophysics to Theater Tech—and all receive comprehensive training to provide you with positive, judgment-free, and practical feedback on your written work. From papers to lab reports to resumes to presentations, if you’re writing something for a class, the Writing Center is here to help you do your best.
7 easy tricks to help ensure your Writing Center visit is successful:
GAI (generative artificial intelligence; sometimes referred to as Large Language Models, or LLMs) are tools like ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4o, Claude, Gemini, and other programs that can generate text. Their texts are mechanically and grammatically correct, and can even fulfill some of the expectations of readers in a variety of contexts. Ethical and responsible use of these tools is an ongoing conversation among scholars, but there is relatively universal agreement that the use of these tools should be disclosed to readers and attributed. However, GAI can be used as part of the writing process in a variety of ways that can help writers without verging on academic misconduct/plagiarism. Some uses of GAI:
For many writers, getting started is the biggest challenge. GAI can be prompted to engage in a conversation that can help you work through your thinking. For example:
When faced with a large project, GAI can provide support in organizing your thinking and presenting your content. For example, a prompt that includes the writer providing a paragraph summary of the key points, goals, purpose, and genre in a GAI tool could be, “What are some ways I could organize these ideas in an essay?” Prompting with more specifics like specifying length, type of text, or reading level can produce additional results.
Have you ever heard feedback from a reader that you need to “say more” or “develop your points”? For writers, this can be challenging when they feel like they have said all there is to say. Here are some ways GAI can help with this:
GAI is not a citation generator. (Those are readily available in many formats, like EasyBiIb or Citation Machine, and built into many databases and word processing programs.) However, it can help writers format their bibliographic entries.
Current general practice is to be transparent about use of GAI, whether that includes an author’s note that explains the writing process, a writer’s reflective memo, or just a footnote that indicates the writer has used GAI as part of the process, and identifies which part of the process. Many major scholarly organizations that set guidelines for citation practices have issued or posted statements about how to document use of GAI.
Professor Smith, a first-year college composition instructor, introduces her students to Generative AI (GAI) tools like ChatGPT to assist with writing assignments. She assigns a project: writing an argumentative essay on a contemporary issue, allowing the use of GAI.
Issues Arise:
Student Perspectives:
Professor's Concerns:
Professor Smith sees potential benefits in GAI but is worried about bias in the AI outputs, the privacy of student data, and the ethical implications regarding authorship.
Discussion Questions:
Writing courses often involve collaboration. Writing is a social activity that involves communicating with others and, furthermore, talking with others can help writers refine their ideas and consider how others respond to their writing choices (CCCC; Giordano et al.; NCTE). Experienced writers often collaborate with others as part of the writing process by sharing ideas, reading and responding to one another’s drafts, asking for input from communities that are represented in the writing, sharing and publicizing their writing, or engaging with readers or responses to their writing. At a fundamental level, writing is a social practice: it is typically done in order to communicate with an audience, whether that audience is one person on the other end of a text message or many people reading a published work. Even writing a to-do list or a journal can be considered communication with your future self, and scholars of writing have pointed out that the ways we think internally are shaped by our social experiences (Bruffee).
Over the course of their education, many students learn to think about writing as something that they do for school and try to produce work that aligns with “what the teacher wants.” In a composition course like UN 1015 though—the one you are taking—the lessons, assignments, and course goals are all based on research about how to teach writing effectively and how students learn. The goals of this class are shaped by learning goals that the university has adopted, as well as research on education and writing. That research is not just about how writers write and how students learn; it also considers what knowledge and practice will be expected of you as a member of the communities you engage with and as a team member in your future workplace (Bruffee; NCTE). Much of the writing you encounter (including this textbook!) is designed and produced collaboratively. Therefore, in order to learn to write in ways that will help you beyond your time as a student, you will need to learn how to create, respond to, and revise writing in collaboration with others.
Even beyond writing itself, collaborative learning is what education experts call a high-impact practice. According to the American Association of Colleges and Universities, high-impact practices are teaching and learning approaches that are “based on evidence of significant educational benefits for students who participate in them” (aacu.org, “High-Impact Practices”). This robust evidence for the educational benefits of collaborative learning, such as building trust and goals for revision, is why “Foster Collaboration” is one of the essential abilities identified in Michigan Tech’s Essential Education goals and performance criteria (Michigan Tech University Senate).
Collaboration can be helpful at almost any stage of the writing process. As you have seen from previous chapters and sections, collaborating with others can involve discussing the writing task, your topic ideas, your plans, and/or your writing process with others (such as classmates, your instructor, or a friend or family member). Writing centers typically invite students to speak with a tutor at any stage of the writing process, and many writing courses have collaboration built into class activities and assignments so students can benefit from collaboration.
This section will primarily discuss collaboration strategies for group projects, but a few of the sections include material that could be used for individual projects, too. (For the purposes of this section, individual projects will refer to those in which you receive feedback and/or grades as an individual, whereas group projects will refer to those in which your assignment receives feedback and/or grades as a group.)
For group projects, planning and communication are central to successful collaboration. Some groups may be able to achieve success without this kind of preparation, but relying on luck also opens your group up to the chance that group members will not see things the same way nor have the same expectations, which can lead to conflict or inequitable distribution of responsibilities. For example, some students prefer to have their work done early, whereas others find that they have trouble working without the pressure of an impending deadline. You are unlikely to change these kinds of habits and practices during the course of your project, so knowing these differences and planning ways of working with them is an important part of collaboration. We suggest that your group start off by building connections between group members and then have a thorough discussion of your expectations. These processes can help you find ways to work together even if all members of your group don’t have the same preferences or ways of working.
Sometimes when students begin working together on a group project, they already know each other from other classes or from previous activities. However, it’s fairly common for students not to know the names of everyone else in class even if they’ve been seeing one another for a few weeks or even a few months. So, if you don’t remember the name of everyone in your group or don’t know much about one another, don’t be shy about suggesting a round of introductions before you start working together. This can help you remember one another’s names and learn more about one another’s skills and experiences.
One introduction activity that can help even for team members that know one another is to brainstorm the relevant skills and experiences you each bring to the project. The elevator pitch activity below can be used in two ways. If you will have input on your group members, the elevator pitch can help you understand which classmates you might want to work with. Or, if groups have already been assigned, the elevator pitch can be used to get to know one another and think about how to distribute work among different group members.
Instructions:
Goal: Create a 1–2 minute elevator pitch for your classmates to share your skills and interests.
An elevator pitch is a brief description of your skills, experience, and expertise that is often used in professional situations involving networking with colleagues or potential colleagues. Examples of situations in which elevator pitches are used include conferences and during job searches (e.g., at a career fair). Typically, an elevator pitch is something that you can bring into a conversation with a potential employer or colleague when they ask you about your experience or expertise. When people are starting their careers, they may write out and practice an elevator pitch (with mentors or friends as audience) that they then refine over time as they notice how people respond.
More information on elevator pitches can be found at the websites below:
Process: To prepare your Elevator Pitch:
Delivery: These can be delivered aloud in class, in group meetings, or by using online tools like Flip (video) or Padlet (multimodal) to share pitches asynchronously.
At the outset of a collaborative writing project, you will need to work together to make sure that your topic and process are clear to the entire team. One of the most important factors in the success of collaborative writing projects is clarity of responsibilities and communication processes—that is, does everyone on the team know what their role is? Does everyone know what responsibilities have been assigned to them? How will team members share updates on their responsibilities or communicate about problems that arise?
One way to address these concerns and others is to discuss them at the beginning of your collaboration. In this discussion, you’re not just engaging in the invention of the ideas that you will write about, but also inventing the kind of team you will be. Your instructor may require you to create a plan or contract if you’re collaborating with others on a major project. However, even if it’s not required, it’s a good idea to discuss some of the basic expectations and plans you have of one another to ensure that your team works together smoothly.
If you’re collaborating for a smaller project or a brief activity, you might just informally discuss this: Who will take notes? Who will share with the whole class when you’re done?
For longer projects, a team contract is a great way to outline some of the important aspects of your collaboration for everyone’s clarity. There are many team contract templates available online that you can use as a starting place. If you are creating your own team contract from scratch, here are a few recommendations of things to include:
For example, if someone in the group does not meet their goals on time, what should that person do? What should the rest of the group do?
As you think about this, try to reflect on your experiences with group work to provide you with some perspective on how things might go. We also advise that you try to imagine yourself on either side of the conflict. That is, instead of assuming that someone not meeting a goal is intentional, consider what kinds of extenuating circumstances might lead to that situation (e.g., family obligations, health issues, etc.).
In addition to your team contract, of course, you will probably also need to make some decisions about the topic and outcomes of your collaboration. However, working on the contract first can help you with these steps. For example, if you have decided on a decision-making process (e.g., Will you need consensus from all team members? How will you address disagreements?), this might make the discussion of topic and outcomes go more smoothly.
Tip: Different modes of communication might help you get a more well-rounded picture of group members’ perspectives. Some people might feel pressured to agree with the group in meetings but be more willing to share their honest opinions in writing, or vice versa. Having more than one way to communicate can help ensure that you hear everyone’s perspectives.
Group projects: Once you and your group have decided on some of the goals and processes that will guide your collaboration, it’s time to talk about the topic and direction for your project.
First, make sure that you and your team all understand the assignment. Even if you’ve discussed the assignment as a class, make sure that you carefully read the assignment description and make a note of key information and any questions that come up for you prior to discussing with your group. This is one way of preparing for the discussion with your team. You can then use your initial group discussion to talk about the assignment and check one another’s understanding.
Once you’ve discussed the assignment requirements and addressed any questions that have come up about the assignment goals and requirements, it’s time to think about your group’s approach to the assignment: what topic(s) could your group focus on? Who will the audience be? If there is flexibility in the genre(s) you create, what genres seem like a good fit with the topic(s) and audience(s) your group is considering?
Tip: Since different people think at different speeds, it may be helpful to provide group members with some time to think about potential topics before diving into a discussion. This is where invention activities such as brainstorming, freewriting, mind mapping, and preliminary research can be helpful. If your instructor hasn’t guided your whole class through an activity like this, you can use some of your group meeting time to have everyone think or research on their own for 5–10 minutes before discussing as a group. Or, you can assign everyone to spend a small amount of time (<20 minutes) on this kind of activity before your next meeting.
Once your group has made decisions about the open portions of your assigned writing task such as topic, audience(s), and/or genre, you will have to organize your work in two different ways. First, you’ll need to think about how you will organize your collaborative work. You’ve done some groundwork for this organizing when you developed your team contract, but now that you have more specific ideas about your project, you’ll need to think about:
Collaborative drafting can happen in a few ways. Often, it’s useful to assign different parts of the drafting to different team members who will compose the first draft of their assigned material. Some teams are able to collaboratively draft sections or an entire paper together, but this can depend on the familiarity and comfort level of team members with one another and the task. Others might find it distracting to be working together on the same section of a document or be nervous about making changes to others’ words. In addition, many collaborative tools such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word 365 can handle some simultaneous editing, but a large number of people or edits happening simultaneously can cause problems.
If your group or one of the writers in your group is struggling with their writing, one method for working through the problem is to talk through your ideas out loud. The person who is having trouble writing should talk while others listen and/or take notes. The idea for this strategy is that sometimes people find it difficult to get their ideas out and also maintain the voice that they are trying to write in, so talking to someone might help get the ideas out. They can revise later to make the ideas fit the voice of their writing.
Once the first draft is complete, your team can review the draft to see if it fits the plans you’ve made and to identify the strengths and areas for improvement in the draft. If your team does decide to assign different sections of writing to different team members, there are a few specific things to keep in mind:
As you read one another’s contributions and think about what changes to make, it’s a good idea to keep the assignment requirements in mind. If your instructor has provided a rubric or set of requirements, you can use that to help guide your feedback to one another and to prioritize the different types of feedback readers provide. As noted in the section on peer review, it’s important to focus on things like content, organization, and task requirements at the review and revision stage.
Some specific revision strategies related to organization are listed in the organizing section: reverse outlines and a cut-and-paste activity. Of course, you can also check your work against an outline if you made one. The two additional strategies are helpful for times when you’re having trouble seeing what the structure should look like or when you’re having trouble with paragraphs.
Don’t be afraid to cut! If writing is a process in which we develop our thoughts as we compose, then many writers are able to create more concise, effective sentences later in the writing process because their thinking has developed further. If it makes you nervous to cut written material, consider creating a separate document with the material you cut so you can go back to it later if you decide you need it.
Many students have learned editing strategies from their previous writing or writing feedback. Editing for things like repetition, formatting, adherence to citation style, and concision are pretty common forms of editing across many types of projects and writers.
When it comes to editing for things like punctuation, syntax, usage, and style (what many people think of as “grammar”), bear in mind that there are many different Englishes spoken and written within the U.S. and around the world, and with that comes many different ways to say things “correctly.” What’s familiar to you may not necessarily be the only “correct” way to say something. As you are reading others’ writing and thinking about what edits to suggest, ask yourself: do I understand what the writer means? If the answer is “yes,” then your suggested edit is probably more about how fitting the writer’s choices are for the context (or how familiar the choices are to you) than about what’s “correct,” since the purpose of language is to convey meaning.
Many writers have learned “rules” about how to write such as:
However, writing is more complex and contextual than rules like these suggest and effective writing can’t really be summarized by a simple set of rules. One can follow all of the “rules” set out in a style guide and still have writing that’s not achieving its purpose, and vice versa. Therefore, if you find yourself in a situation in which you are editing classmates’ writing, think about where your idea about what’s correct comes from. In addition, it’s often more helpful to point out patterns in the writing that stand out to you as a reader and to explain why they stand out to you rather than to frame the writer’s choices as incorrect. For example, explaining that you’ve been taught not to use first person pronouns in a lab report because it draws readers’ attention to the scientist and their subjectivity is more helpful than just telling someone not to use “I” in their lab report.
A common technique that people use at the editing and proofreading stage is to read the draft aloud. Even if you have no one to listen to you, reading aloud can sometimes help you to hear or notice things in the writing that you might want to change. If you do have a listener, they might also be able to point out things from their perspective.
Another strategy is to use a screen reader (many programs have them built in) to read your text aloud to you:
There are a variety of tools available online for managing collaborative projects. Some tools have free versions with limited features that may be enough to support your small group on a project. (The paid versions can also be dependent on the size of the team in some cases.)
One of the important decisions your group will need to make early on is about the tools you will use to collaborate. Sometimes it is tempting to try out a new platform to see how it works, but keep in mind that many tech experts know all too well that newer isn’t always better when it comes to technologies used for work. The best tools for collaboration are typically those that
A new platform with lots of bells and whistles may not be better than a tried and true platform like your word processing software if people need to learn to use it or pay to use it. In addition, if you want long term access to your work, keep in mind that some small or brand new tools don’t take off or get bought by larger companies and this can mean that you have to transfer data or risk losing it. A final consideration that may be more or less relevant depending on the tool is intellectual property and control of data: some platforms require users to allow the platform use of their data in order to create an account or use the tool.
Since businesses and organizations often need to work collaboratively, there are many tools available for organizing team projects. These tools often have task and timeline tracking features but may also include many other tools such as messaging, file sharing, and more.
Since everyone on our campus has access to Google features such as Google Drive, creating a shared drive is an accessible entry point for sharing materials in your group. This allows your team to share
In addition, many of the platforms allow commenting and chatting, which can be helpful for asking questions or getting feedback asynchronously (i.e., between meetings).
If you aren’t already familiar with some of Google’s project management tools, you can search Google Help (support.google.com) or the web for information on Google Docs “smart chips” and “building blocks,” which allow you to create things like dropdown menus to show a task status.
If your group has a complex task, you can check project management tools to see if there is a free trial or free version with limited features that your group can use. However, some old school project management tools, such as gantt charts, can be created in a variety of ways depending on the tools you have access to.
Gantt charts are plans or maps of project tasks and timelines. Typically they list tasks in a left-hand column (on the vertical axis) and time on the top of the sheet (the horizontal axis). This allows team members to map out tasks according to how long they are expected to take and whether they are dependent on previous tasks, providing a visual overview of a project schedule that can be scaled up or down in specificity. Project management platforms like Asana or Monday advertise gantt chart capabilities, but you can also use a tool like a spreadsheet (in Google Sheets or Excel) to make one, and both Microsoft and Google have online tutorials showing how to create them.
If the project is less complex and time intensive, your group may prefer to use a simple list of checkboxes, a table, or calendar items to identify tasks and due dates. Many of these features are available in Google Docs, Google Calendar, and/or Google Keep (which has a sharing feature).
For visualization activities such as mind mapping or structure mapping, there are free online mind mapping tools such as Miro, but you can also use the tools in Google Slides or Powerpoint, Google Draw, or even map out ideas on paper and upload a scan or photo of the paper to your shared drive. The need for a dedicated tool might depend on how complex the map is, since mapping tools make it a little easier to create links and relationships between ideas.
Another type of useful tool for writing and collaborating is a citation management tool. Zotero is a popular example of such a tool that your team can use to save relevant sources (including academic sources, news articles, websites, social media posts, and more). Zotero is free and open source. Zotero browser extensions can be used to pull metadata from websites and automatically create entries in a library. Zotero “groups” allow you to create group citation libraries that are hosted on the web for sharing with a team. The free version allows you to share with as many people as you want, but the free storage is limited to 300 MB.
One of the particularly useful features of a citation management system, in addition to storing and sharing sources, is that these systems can be integrated into word processing software to create in-text citations and automatically populate the reference list with the sources cited in the text. This is especially useful for longer projects or those with a lot of sources. The citation manager can help you keep track of which sources are still in the paper after revising, for example, instead of having to manually check the in-text citations and the references page. As with any citation generator, it’s still a good idea to double check the in-text citations and reference list to make sure that the entries are formatted correctly.
There are many benefits to working in groups, including
However, collaborative work can also involve conflict. Sometimes conflict comes up because people have different styles of working, personalities, and/or ways of seeing the world that are hard to align with one another. Other times, though, conflict can come about due to misunderstanding, miscommunication, and ineffective strategies for dealing with these issues (“Managing Conflict”). If your group or a few of its members find yourselves dealing with conflict in your team, the tips below may help you to manage the situation effectively.
Address the conflict or problem as soon as possible, as long as people are calm enough to speak to one another respectfully and to listen to one another. Waiting can sometimes make things worse or reduce the number of available options for resolving the conflict (“Managing Conflict”).
If needed, take a pause for people to calm down and collect their thoughts (Reynolds). This could be a five-minute pause during a group meeting or a longer pause, such as meeting later in the day or the next day. It’s important to have a plan for when the discussion will resume.
When discussing the problem, try to focus on the process and the project rather than other people (Reynolds). That is, framing the problem in relation to another person on your team (“you did X”), can escalate the situation because that person may feel judged or blamed, which might lead them to respond defensively or to shut down rather than staying in the conversation until the conflict is resolved.
If members of your team are having trouble focusing on the process and the project, you may want to try out a conflict management tool called “I statements.” An “I statement” is a common technique in conflict management that focuses on how the situation is affecting each person involved (i.e., how it makes the person feel or how it affects their ability to contribute to the project). In conflict management, this technique is used to help people on different sides of the conflict listen to one another’s perspective.
"It is very important to begin I statements by stating the emotion you have about the situation, rather than a thought or action” (Conflict Management at Iowa).
"If using this technique, it’s important for everyone involved to have a chance to explain their perspective (“I Statements” (Montemurro).
Engage in active listening. Sometimes, part of a conflict involves people not being heard or feeling invalidated. Therefore, an important part of navigating conflict is to ensure that different people involved are hearing one another and acknowledging one another’s perspectives. This is true even if the different people do not agree: it’s possible to hear and acknowledge someone else’s perspective even if yours is different. One method for hearing and acknowledging one another is to listen actively (“10 Tips for Active Listening”; “What Is Active Listening?”). Some techniques for active listening include:
Summarize and reflect on the conversation by acknowledging points of agreement, as these are often the foundation of a plan to move forward. Of course, you should also acknowledge points of disagreement; otherwise the people involved may not feel heard or understood. The points of agreement or alignment can be a starting point for moving forward as a team (Reynolds).
Create a plan to resolve the problem and follow through on the plan (“Managing Conflict”; Reynolds).
If your group is having trouble working through the conflict on your own, you may also seek out guidance from your instructor. However, instructors will often want to discuss things with all parties involved, so having discussed the issue within your group is a good first step before taking things to your instructor.
Chapter 8: Talking with Others about Your Writing