Changes I would make

Workshopping has generally gone well, though I've seen several things I'll do differently next time. Here's a brief overview of what we've done:

• I've had the students bring in 3-5 pages each workshop session. They print off three drafts to share with the other students.
• With the exception of the final workshop day, I've broken them up into groups of three to four. On the final day we picked 3 or 4 drafts and went over them together on the overhead.
• The students circulate their drafts through their groups, each student making suggested changes, additions, and cuts. These drafts are then turned back to the original student.

We discussed the benefits of this in class last Monday: the sharing of ideas, exposing students to new approaches to writing, class-wide involvement. I won't go into that anymore. Rather, here is what I would change next time.

• Be more strict with the workshopping. I allowed the students who hadn't brought anything to workshop to participate and give feedback to the others in the group, thinking at least this would give them exposure to some of their peers' writing. Although there were only two or three in each class, this weakened the quality of the workshop overall as the students didn't take it as seriously (many didn't bring the minimum page count) and those who did weren't able to review other works. I think I'll go with Tyler's strategy next time and just dismiss whoever didn't bring material.
• Outline workshop expectations further ahead of time. The students didn't know exactly what to expect from the workshops because I wasn't sure either. It took the first day to know just what I wanted to do. Now that I know, I can outline this for them sooner next time.
• Give a better explanation of the component parts. I had figured they had a pretty good idea of what to do in the introduction, body, and conclusion before we started workshopping, since we had spent a good deal of time discussing it. I was wrong. The first introductions we drafted were along the lines of "In Mr. Mickel's class we have discussed eight different articles. They are about education," or "On a bright, spring day, eight renowned authors walk into the Cafe Ville Belle to have a conversation about education."
• One change I can make to remedy the above is to characterize the first workshop not as "the introduction to your lit review," but as "a 3 to 4 page discussion of the issue, why it's important and what the debates are."

I'm looking forward to workshopping the second lit review so I can implement all these changes.