Evaluating Student Participation

Promoting student engagement can be, at times, a challenge.  Student centered and experiential learning are important for improving achievement, supporting retention of knowledge and skills, and helping students develop the “soft” skills that will support them as lifelong learners.  If choosing to evaluate participation as part of course grading, it helps to have a plan for how to do so.  Grading and evaluating participation comes with advantages and disadvantages, so it is important to think through your plan and rationale.

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• RESEARCH

  Examine selected research on evaluating student participation.

  Paulson, J. Cultural considerations in the assessment of class participation in international online courses. https://www.vnseameo.org/InternationalConference2015/presentation/IIB1JamesPaulson/II-B-1%20Dr.%20James%20Paulson%20-%20Full%20Paper.pdf (PDF)

  Wilke, C. A.  (2012).  The online discussion conference grading rubric. Santa Clara University. https://www.scu.edu/media/offices/provost/assessment/Collection-of-rubrics-for-online-discussions.pdf (PDF)

• APPLICATION

  Ready to apply strategies for evaluating participation to your teaching? Here are some ideas and strategies to get you started:

  1. Decide whether or not you actually should have a participation grade based on the needs and diverse backgrounds of your students.
     1. Building a culture of collaboration [1], [2], [3], [4] in your classroom norms can improve participation rates without specifically scoring participation.
  2. Clearly establish your expectations for participation with your students.  Be sure to include this information in your syllabus and Blackboard course shell and to explicitly communicate this in person, during synchronous class meetings, and/or in asynchronous course materials.
  3. Determine the learning outcomes that are expected to result from participation in your course or activity (or determine how participation directly supports existing content-specific learning outcomes).

  Create a rubric [1(opens in new window)], [2 (PDF)], [3 (PDF)], [4 (PDF)], [5 (PDF)], [6(opens in new window)] to help evaluate participation.