Assignment using collaboration and / or technology

What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

So I've been thinking about how to incorporate writing across the curriculum in a highly standardized first year composition course.  I very much value the assignments we do in FYC -- even when they aren't working as well as I think they could -- because I value the type of writing these assignments are designed to foster and refine: academic discourse.  I also think there's a value in this type of writing despite the student's major; writing is required in every discipline in the university.  So how to incorporate writing across the curriculum here, and how to include collaboration and technology?

I think I'd like my students to do a reflective, investigative essay on the type of writing they will be expected to do in an academic version of their field  (I mean that an engineer in the academy will write quite differently than an engineer in industry).  I would start by pairing (or grouping; the groups don't necessarily have to have two members) students with similar majors.  Then I would ask each student to locate a scholarly article that would be similar to one they could see themselves writing.  To do this, I would ask them to first think about the type of job they would most like to have after graduation: a sculptor, a librarian, or a dentist, for example.  I would then ask them to search for an article written by the academic equivalent of the position, and print the article and bring it to class.  I would spend a class period asking students to take apart these articles, to see the moving parts and how they are working, and then I'd ask the student to write a page or two about what they discovered.  Then I'd ask them to meet with their partner(s), and to try to find links, similarities, or differences in structure and / or style.  I would then ask each group to present their findings to the rest of the class, either with Prezi or Powerpoint.

By doing this assignment, the student would gain firsthand knowledge of scholarly work being done in his / her field, content that has not been dumbed down or otherwise adapted for the first year composition student, and a clear awareness of article structure in the field.  While this assignment would not ask the student to write a similar article, I think that this exposure would be extremely valuable.  It reminds me of the metaphor of listening to the conversation before speaking.

Actually, as I'm sketching this assignment out in my head, it occurs to me that it follows a pretty similar structure to the extended analysis we did in 5060.