Most documents
created today are prepared with the aid of computers. Many universities have
"writing across the curriculum" programs to ensure that students can
create electronic documents that convey their knowledge and understanding, and
demonstrate their ability to participate in the scholarly communication
process.
To function as
effective knowledge workers, students must go beyond word processing skills that
lead only to paper documents. They must learn to work with others, to share
their findings by transmitting their results to others. This teamwork makes it
feasible to collaborate, to co-author works, and thus to participate in research
groups or teams, which are common throughout the research world (at the very
least involving a faculty advisor and graduate student author). It also makes it
pertinent for students to participate in common activities of modern
researchers. Thus, they can be trained to submit a proposal electronically
(e.g., as is required by the United States National Science Foundation)
and to submit a paper to a conference (where papers are uploaded by authors,
and downloaded by editors/reviewers as part of the collection and selection
activities).