Collaborative methods are being increasingly used within the news industry, from Paul Lewis’s investigative work at The Guardian to Neal Mann’s field reporting for Sky, the Farmers’ Weekly team’s coverage of foot and mouth, and Andy Carvin’s coverage of the Arab Spring at NPR.

This ebook has been created to support journalism students and tutors in exploring collaborative journalism methods.

The book is based on a pilot project called ‘Stories & Streams’ which first ran at Birmingham City University in the 2011-12 academic year. This approach, then, builds on real teaching and learning experiences. The intention is to continue to update this book based on subsequent classes using the method and others' experience with the same methods.

For more background you can find a brief project report at the ADM-HEA Networks Magazine with a fuller report forthcoming in a HEA publication on collaborative learning. You can also find a post about the background on the Online Journalism Blog.

The three main findings were:

• Students produce work that is more distinctive, succeeding in breaking away from the ‘churnalism’ that had characterised previous cohort’s efforts; work is now original, unique and in-depth.
• The use of stream workshops, rather than whole class lectures, appeared to be successful in generating more activity in the students than we might normally expect.
• The approach enabled students to develop transferrable and soft skills; research suggests that these skills, which are hard to teach.