Individuals complete their test, bring the answers to the front, and wait for fellow group members to finish. Then, as a Datatronics machine grades the individual exams, the group collaboratively answers those same twenty questions. At this point in the process, students are sharing, arguing, and most important, teaching each other. Group answers are then run through the machine, scores are posted, and the groups start jeering or cheering. Michaelsen then spends a few minutes discussing the two or three questions that have tripped up more than one group.
Students thus turn first to their peers for answers to questions and only last to the teacher.
His purpose is to teach students about group behavior through personal experience. The double mini-tests not only dramatize for students that groups are more effective than any individual but also compel individuals to rely on the group, thereby intensifying personal experience in group behavior. Another benefit of using small groups, according to Michaelsen, is that students motivate each other. Peer pressure results from group norms and it takes time to establish those norms. That is the reason he makes the groups permanent.