Digital Documenting Practices: Collaborative Writing in Workplace Training

Abstract

The present article examines collaborative writing in organizational consulting and training, where writing takes place as part of a group discussion assignment and is carried out by using digital writing technologies. In the training, the groups use digital tablets as their writing device in order to document their answers in the shared digital platform. Using multimodal conversation analysis as a method, the article illustrates the way writing is interactionally accomplished in this setting where digital writing intertwines with face-to-face interaction as the groups jointly formulate a documentable written entry for specific institutional purposes. The results show how writing is managed in situated ways and organized by three specific aspects: access, publicity, and broader organizational practice. The article advances prior understanding of the embodied nature of writing and writing with technologies by demonstrating how the body and the material and social nature of writing technologies intertwine within situated social interaction.