Editor’s Note: This is another article in our Newbies’ Corner series. If you or your students are interested in submitting an article for this feature, please contact me at editor@stc-techedit.org.

By Madison Bellew, Jeremy Collins, Alex Donnelly, Danielle Levy, Sydnei Mayers, Jeremiah Pulliam, Kim Wallace, and Victoria Whitehead

Technical editing is often facilitated by technology, both for the practice of editing and for communication among contributors. Students in technical communication programs bring their own perspective to editing experiences that might differ from those of more experienced professional technical editors.

In this article, students in an international technical communication class at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, U.S., share their perspectives and the lessons they learned during their experience with an international editing project completed using virtual teaming. In the project, the Mercer University students edited a report written by students at the Université de Paris about technical communication in France. Students at both universities used multiple platforms to communicate as a team about expectations for the group, the report itself, and the edits made by the Mercer University students. 

Start with Metacommunication 

Metacommunication is communicating about communication. This process was one of the key aspects of this project. Especially in international groups, it is essential to establish how, when, and what you are going to communicate. When working with international virtual teams (IVTs), one of the most important things to establish at the very beginning is what technologies you will use to communicate certain information and when it is appropriate to communicate with one another. In IVTs, this last part can be tricky, especially when it comes to time zones and holidays celebrated in different countries and cultures.

You can use many different methods to metacommunicate. One method we used was to discuss with our class, before we met with our French teammates, what metacommunication challenges we might encounter with the French students. From there, we were able to create a team charter with our French team members about our expectations for communication. This provided a point of reference for the team for how we would be meeting and communicating, and because it was very efficient, we were able to begin socializing with the French students and working on building trust with one another. Through socializing and following the established communication norms, we were able to build trust and work harmoniously and successfully with one another.

Additionally, setting specific communication expectations creates a cohesiveness throughout the collaboration, which can decrease the amount of work that needs to be done later in the project.

Communicate Socially

Social communication in an IVT is a particularly important process when establishing trust between group members. Because IVTs rarely have the ability to meet and collaborate with one another in person, it can be a very tricky task to establish this trust through social communication; however, it can be accomplished if done correctly. For example, during our first meeting with our French teammates, many teams decided to give a presentation that explained more about themselves; this enabled the groups to get to know each other in a more informal way. Many individuals began to open up and enjoy the opportunity to learn more about one another, which further established trust between group members. Another way to establish social communication is to open a separate group chat where informal communication is encouraged, which allows group members to have an outlet to speak freely, but appropriately. 

Choose Your Tools Deliberately

When faced with a group project that consists of people from different countries, you probably won’t be able use the communication media that you are accustomed to in your country. For example, most of us in this class use a program called GroupMe, which is a highly popular instant message app in the U.S. But when we asked the French students if they would like to use GroupMe, they had no idea what it was! We had to come up with a solution for a communication medium that would be effective and usable by everyone in the group. We approached this issue by:

• Asking the French students which communication media they were familiar with
• Explaining to them the communication media we were familiar with
• Discussing compromises that could be made  

Establish Standards with a Style Guide 

Style guides are essential for writing, formatting, and designing a document consistently, especially when working in IVTs. When English is the language being used, native English speakers should make a special effort to ensure that standards are communicated effectively so meanings are not lost in translation.

Collaborating in an IVT provided invaluable experience: a notable lesson learned was the need for specificity. For example, we developed an editing feedback form that acted as a style guide, which was then attached to the edited report. A team consensus was established to use the American Psychological Association (APA) style manual, with which our international team members were familiar. However, upon receiving the report from the Université de Paris team, we noticed APA style was used only when creating the citations, rather than for formatting and grammar throughout the whole document. Our French counterparts were familiar with style manuals but only in the aspect of citation formatting. They were unaware that style rules also applied to the structure and content of documents. Although this issue was easily resolved through communication and by providing additional resources about APA style guides, stating specific guidelines at the beginning would have made things simpler. In other words, we learned never to assume anything. 

Explain Edits 

As subject matter experts, editors might suffer from the curse of knowledge,or the inability to explain a complex concept to less-adept individuals. We assume that low-level edits do not require any further explanation, but that is not always the case, especially when the authors come from different backgrounds and fluencies in a shared language.

Before we began editing our international teams’ documents, team members from France asked us to explain why we were planning on making certain edits. The French team members were not interested in having editors correct their documents without any explanations, because they wanted to learn about the process, as well the grammar and punctuation rules of writing in U.S. Standard English. 

Justifying edits to an international audience is not always easy. For instance, during our editing debrief, one of the authors asked about parallel structure. This is a common principle within U.S. English, so we did not expect to have to explain what was, to us, a standard. However, the French authors were confused by this edit – warranting proper reasoning. It is always a good practice to explain edits no matter the audience.

Final Thoughts

This project presented an interesting opportunity to work professionally with individuals from a different country and culture. The international collaboration methods learned during the experience were valuable. The sharing of experiences, cultural norms, and information with our Université de Paris team members was an invaluable experience, which could never have been gained through a textbook or lectures.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Université de Paris team members for working with us on this project, and to Dr. Patricia Minacori and Dr. Pam Estes Brewer for facilitating it.