Hybridizing F2F and Virtual Collaboration between a Government Agency and Service-Learning Technical Writing Students

Abstract

This case study reviews a hybrid face-to-face (F2F) and virtual collaboration between the State of Hawaii’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife and a team of university technical writing students to indicate specific features of the hybridity as it shaped the collaboration. In a course focused on organizational authorship, students were tasked with learning about the organization’s workplace culture to successfully represent its ethos in a report on the history of forestry in Hawai‘i. Moments and modes of collaboration are discussed chronologically as they enabled successful report writing, featuring key components: clearly stipulating terms of collaboration through service-learning, assessing fit between the course and the organization, emphasizing the need for onsite visits by students to ascertain the workplace culture, conducting swift follow-up on challenges in meshing the virtual with the face-to-face, and leveraging each mode of collaboration synergistically rather than discretely.