What Technical Communicators Teach Student Affairs Professionals about Collaborative Authorship

Collaborative authorship may be a place where the fields of Technical Communication and Student Affairs meet. And in this meeting, each may learn from one another. Student affairs professionals and technical communicators may have some valuable lessons to teach each other about the value of collaboration and authorship, separately, and collaborative authorship.

Student Affairs: Collaboration for Development is Fundamental
The goal for the student affairs professional is to help develop students into a better students, into leaders, and eventually, into contributing citizens of the university. Using developmental theories, student affairs professionals work together collaboratively to assist students in every way imaginable. Teams of support staff in colleges and universities use various theories to collaborate with fellow professionals, faculty, and most importantly, the students themselves.

Viewing students through the various theoretical lenses such as cognitive development, identity development, and career inventories, student affairs professionals work together with the end goal of helping students develop.

Technical Communication: Authorship for Audience is Fundamental
The technical communications professional is keenly aware of audience in authoring materials for users. Collaboration for the technical communicator means working as a liaison between developers of content and users of content. Collaboration often takes the form of technical communicators producing several iterations of documents for their audience to approve. Using various technical tools, software and hardware, a technical communicator works collaboratively with the user to deliver understandable, useful content.

Student Affairs and Technical Communication: Learning Fundamentals from Each Other
In student affairs realms, there is a real sense of working together to benefit the community of students. There is a greater good that drives a student affairs person in their jobs, and that greater good is developing students collaboratively. Technical communicators are driven as well-- driven to communicate the best message to the audience in they way that the audience will best hear it. Though this is the case, technical communicators don't work often in collaborative teams due to the often times freelance nature of positions. Student affairs personnel have the benefit of being located on the same campus together in the community. Technical communicators could learn from student affairs professionals by understanding that the community interaction is critical and that face to face interactions--social interactions, even-- are essential. Where the student affairs professionals fall short is with authorship. The documentation that comes from the field is too sparse and not iterative enough. Student affairs people can take a lesson from technical communicators: ask students for input repeatedly and make documents that reflect the feedback.

Collaborative Authorship: Fundamentals for Student Affairs Professionals
Student affairs personnel can infuse collaborative authorship into several areas of their jobs. For those who supervise student employees, collaborating on the writing of the policies and procedures on a wiki can be a way for professional staff to elicit constant feedback from students. A wiki document is a way to build information and trust in the documentation process because of the collaborative nature of the writing. Certain permissions can and should be set, but there could be levels that are "unlocked" as students achieve greater responsibility in the organization.

A collaborative wiki could be used for student organization volunteers as well. Trainings would benefit by collaborative authorship, as well. Committees of students and professionals should be working together to author training documents and sessions.

Collaborative authorship works for student affairs professionals working up the administrative chain of the university. By banding together to tell the story, various departments can and should author documentation that shows the worth of student affairs to students and to the university. There is not enough being written by professionals in student affairs.