Step 3: Making class time for the presentations

During a three-week span, the experts teams make their in-class presentations, which are worked in around the on-going, normal sequence of reading and writing assignments and discussions.  The results are not completely professional and without error, but I critique their presentations, as do their classmates, in a supportive way, and I have them revise and improve the projects until all are worthy of an A.

By mid-semester the experts have made their presentations and have become knowledgeable of a major editing error that had been problematic for them up to that point.  Thereafter, during the frequent workshop days, which is what constitutes most of the in-class time after the first half of the semester, when students want to ask me questions about punctuation or grammar while they are composing or revising work, I redirect them to “the comma consultants” or the “fragment experts” or the “verb tense pros” in their class.  The different experts teams are required to advertise their services in some way; some simply post a flier on the wall with their names and their services, but others have been very creative in their advertising, developing posters and even signs. I find myself spending very little time explaining editing corrections during workshop days; I'm able, instead, to focus more on content issues, to help with research problems, and to explain documentation conventions during my one-on-one, in-class “mini-conferences.”

Why do this? The Results