The impact of coordination methods on the enhancement of business writing

Universities with limited resources are being pressured to cover more material within their degree programs. Because of this, schools are looking to integrate material from different classes. This paper sets out to determine if students can learn business writing within the context of another class, specifically, an information systems class. The goal is to eliminate the need for a separate business-writing course. However, the students will have to learn the material with limited support in order not to place an additional load on the instructor. This study investigates whether individuals can develop their business-writing skills during the course of repeated group work and whether there are differences in the level of their learning, based on collaborative media. The results show that individuals can learn business-writing skills with a minimum of support through direct instruction. In addition, there is no difference between individuals working in face-to-face groups and those working in groups using electronic collaborative work systems.