Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford challenge the assumption that writing is a solitary act. That challenge is grounded in their own personal experience as long-term collaborators and in their extensive research, including a three-stage study of collaborative writing supported by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.
The authors urge a fundamental change in our institutions to accommodate collaboration by radically resituating power in the classroom and by instituting rewards for collaborative work that equal rewards for single-authored work. They conclude with the injunction: "Today and in the twenty-first century, our data suggest, writers must be able to work together. They must, in short, be able to collaborate."