Collaborative Writing Workflows in the Data-Driven Classroom: A Conversation Starter

Abstract

To paraphrase John Tukey, the beauty of working with data is that you get to “play in everyone’s backyard.” A corollary to this statement is that working with data necessitates collaboration. Although students often learn technical workflows to wrangle and analyze data, these workflows may break down or require adjustment to accommodate the different stages of the writing process when it is time to face the communication phase of the project. In this article, I propose two writing workflows for use by students in a final-project setting. One workflow involves version control and aims to minimize the chance of a merge conflict throughout the writing process, and the other aims to add some level of reproducibility to a Google-Doc-heavy writing workflow (i.e., avoid manual copying and pasting). Both rely on a division of the labor, require a plan (and structure) to be created and followed by members of a team, and involve communication outside of the final report document itself. This article does not aim to solve all collaborative writing pain points but instead aims to start the conversation on how to explicitly teach students not only how to code collaboratively but to write collaboratively.