Making EGs Work
English 101: Critical Writing | Spring 2008
EGs Explained
The Endorsement Group (EG) process is a hybrid—and more effective—form of peer response. Because I assign students to EGs based upon their writing strengths and because each group is responsible for a discreet set of criteria, we can all count on high-quality feedback: we no longer have to worry about the whole blind-leading-the-blind syndrome or about issues of thoroughness.
Here's how the process works. Before you can submit a paper to me for credit, it must first meet the approval of two members from each EG (except from your own group, from which you need only one signature).
• Comprehensive Issues: Thesis, Focus, Audience Awareness
• Development Issues: Support, Source Use, Logic
• Organization Issues: Cohesion, Paragraph Focus/Sequence
• Local Issues: Style, Grammar, Punctuation, Citation
Endorsement Group Rules
¨ Your primary responsibility during Endorsement Group (EG) sessions is to your colleagues. Please, therefore, remain in the classroom (unless you require privacy for a peer conference), display your nametag, and frequently survey the room to ensure that less assertive colleagues take advantage of your services.
¨ To the fullest extent possible, endorse in pairs: read the paper together, determine the paper's readiness in pairs, and provide feedback to the writer in pairs.
¨ Please remember that although your task involves supporting your colleagues in becoming the best writers they can be, do not withhold endorsement unless their submissions fall below minimum competency in the issues for which your group is responsible. If you would award a C or better to that paper, please endorse it, even if you do so with a generous helping of improvement advice.
¨ At the same time, please refrain from endorsing any paper that does not reach C-level competence in the issues for which your group is responsible. That means waiting to sign the EG Routing Slip until you see that the writer has made the changes you require for endorsement.
¨ Please do not be shy about seeking my input—in class or during my office hours—about your own papers and about papers submitted to your group for endorsement. I want to support, not abandon, you.
¨ If you are confident that your services are not currently required during an EG session, work on your own papers first and other English 101 tasks second until such time as a colleague seeks your input.
¨ Please also take full advantage of your colleagues' expertise—even if your papers aren't ready for endorsement. Smart writers seek feedback from other writers at many stages of the process.
¨ EG sessions are work sessions, not study halls. Students not fully engaged in the work of English 101 will be marked absent.
¨ You must see Endorsement Groups in the following order:
• Global Issues (always first--it's the law)
• Development Issues or Organization Issues
• Local Issues (always last--it's the law)
If You'll Allow Me
A final word of advice: please do not wait until the deadline(s) to submit fully endorsed papers; get them to me the second the ink dries on your seventh signature. If I get your papers two or more class sessions prior to the deadline, I can verify that they, indeed, pass—giving you time to revise and resubmit if I cannot issue credit to your fully endorsed submission. If I get them too close to the deadline and I can't issue credit, all your work will have been for naught. Very sad.