Teaching Collaborative Problem-Solving in Technical and Professional Communication

Collaboration is consistently cited as a core competency in workplace communication practices. Previous approaches to teaching collaboration focus on meeting and producing a particular deliverable, or product. Pedagogical approaches to collaborative projects are often based on the media students produce through collaboration rather than assessing collaboration specifically. The authors detail an approach to teaching and assessing collaboration using the Procedural Model for Problem Solving (PMOPS) approach to problem solving in an asynchronous learning environment. Students engage in a problem-solving activity with corresponding assignments that guide students through reflection and critique of collaborative processes, and project assessment focuses on collaborative learning outcomes.