I first began writing for The Chronicle in the fall of 1999, in a series describing my search for a tenure-track job. Back then, readers sent me actual, physical letters, although it wasn’t long before they were replaced by emails. Then the emails dried up, as commenting shifted to Twitter and other social-media sites. So I was pleasantly surprised to receive quite a few emails in response to last month’s column on why I’d stopped grading class participation. I’m not holding my breath for a physical letter to show up, but it’s no exaggeration to say that my argument garnered more email than any column I have written in the past decade.
Clearly, I had challenged that cherished academic tradition of awarding 10 percent of a student’s grade to class participation. In last month’s column I explained that I had stopped grading participation, in part, because I felt it was subject to too many biases. It mostly rewards students who like to speak up, are confident in their academic abilities, or want to boost their grade. Instead, I argued, we should drop the grades and find ways to make full classroom participation an expectation for every student.
Almost all of the responses I received had the same purpose: Readers wanted me to consider sound, fair alternatives to our usual way of grading class participation without eliminating the practice altogether.
I drafted the original column because I had been asked to conduct, virtually, a four-week seminar for doctoral students on discussion-based teaching through the Center for Teaching and Learning at Central European University, in Budapest. In preparing to teach it, I had the opportunity to think and rethink my own convictions about class participation. In the seminar, I presented the same argument that I made in the column — and was delighted to find some doctoral students pushing back, making the case that there were good reasons to grade participation and equitable methods of doing so.
One student argued, for example, that participation grades had been crucial to helping her succeed in college. When she was struggling in a course, she knew she could boost her grade by participating as actively as possible. She wanted to be able to provide that same opportunity to her own students. Others pointed out that, in certain fields, it was essential for students to learn how to think on their feet and engage in public conversation. Effective participation in a discussion was a core learning objective, and a grade would convey its importance as a skill that needed to be practiced and learned.
Readers had other objections, like this one from an instructor at a community college:
- “If I do away with grading participation, my concern is that more students will arrive late and be distracted by their phones during class. I know that, ideally, students should want to learn based on intrinsic motivation. But I’m also a fan of Aristotle, and, thus, I also see the value in helping students build these habits — at first with carrots and sticks, and then, as the semester progresses, they come to the realization that ‘I should be on time, listen to others, and join class discussions, not for a grade, but because now I see that it is intrinsically good to do so. These things will help me become a better human being.’ In other words … if I stop grading participation, more students will arrive late, skip class more frequently, and be distracted by their phones during class.”
I agree that graded assessments can motivate some students who otherwise might check out of a class period or even an entire course. And I also see merit in the arguments of the seminar students. In my own teaching, I still won’t grade participation. But I would like to offer two alternative models for those of you who prefer to keep grading participation yet want to do so in ways that are fair to all students.
Model No. 1: From participation to engagement. One of the problems with the usual way we grade class participation — and the way I once did it myself — is that it’s imprecise and subject to the limitations of the faculty member’s imperfect memories. At the end of a semester, the instructor eyeballs students’ names trying to remember how often they spoke up in class, and then nudges their grades up or down accordingly.
One solution: Take your imperfect memory out of the equation, and grade students on their “engagement” — that is, their completion of concrete class-participation activities that you can track, collect, and assess.
For example, when I am teaching poetry, I want students to get in the habit of annotating the poems they read. To give them practice, sometimes I hand out a copy of a poem and put them in small groups to annotate it as thoroughly as possible. While they work, I circulate (in a Zoom classroom you could circulate when the small groups go into their separate breakout rooms) and ensure that all students are fully engaged in the task. (In large classes, it’s difficult to monitor all of the groups yourself so you can assign monitoring roles to certain students, an inclusive-teaching practice recommended by Viji Sathy and Kelly A. Hogan.)
After 10 or 15 minutes of work on the poem, students are well-prepared to share their observations in a whole-class discussion. At the end of the class, I ask them to write their names on the annotation worksheets and I collect them (in an online classroom, all of this could happen via the course website) . Back in my office I look through them quickly — and I mean really quickly, like five minutes total — and check off the names. If a student was in class, and contributed to the worksheet, they get full credit for the day.
The idea here is to have your students produce something concrete that (a) requires them to engage actively with the day’s material and (b) can be quickly assessed (and graded, if you like) to ensure that students are showing up to class and participating. Among the many ways to do that:
- Assign a quick writing activity at the beginning or end of class.
- Have students contribute to a shared Google Doc on a particular reading.
- Ask them to post substantive comments (not just “I agree”) in an online chat about the day’s material.
- Hand out group worksheets on a theme or a problem.
- Give low-stakes quizzes.
- Use polling software to ask students questions about course material.
Consider, then, whether you might shift your “participation” grade to an “engagement” grade. Give full credit to every student who is present and makes a good-faith effort to complete the activity.
Mounds of research show that active learning helps students learn in class, but not all active learning is the same. Simply asking students if they have any questions or putting them in groups and telling them to “discuss X” is unlikely to produce the active-learning results you’re hoping for. Instead, build your class period around a well-designed engagement activity that requires students to create a tangible product and then reward them for their efforts.
Model No. 2: Self-assessment. Perhaps some aspect of your course makes an engagement grade impossible. Maybe you have too many students to be collecting and assessing concrete products every day (or even every week). If so, consider another alternative to relying on your imperfect memory: Ask students to document their own participation.
But don’t replicate the original problem by asking them to rely on their imperfect memories at the end of a semester. Create a rubric that covers all the forms of class participation in your course: attentive listening, asking questions, contributing to a discussion, participating in group work, posting comments to a discussion board before or after class, and more. Be expansive about what counts as participation.
Give that rubric to students at several points throughout the semester, and ask them to log their participation. You can do this at different intervals. I know some faculty members who ask students to complete a participation rubric every day, others who do it weekly, and still others who do it just two or three times in a semester.
When the time comes to grade students on their class participation, you’ll have these primary documents to provide you with a more accurate record. At any point along the way, you can ask them to supplement their documents with a self-assessment: How well do they think they’re doing? Are they participating enough? How do they plan to improve? You still have the responsibility of assigning the final grade, but you now have plenty of information to help inform your decision.
Back when I graded class participation, I sometimes asked students to “grade” their own engagement halfway through the course — and always noticed that participation picked up immediately afterward. That assignment seemed to remind them that participation was being evaluated in the course, and they jumped back to life at a point of the semester when students’ attention often starts to lag.
You can find plenty of rubrics online for student self-assessment of their class participation. Adapt one you like to your course and classroom.
As you may have noticed, both of these alternative models rely on the same mechanism: Students produce something concrete upon which you can base your participation (or engagement) grade. Both have other potential benefits. An engagement grade can help you think more creatively about what you are asking students to do in your classes; a participation grade might increase your students’ self-awareness about their participation and ownership of their own education.
I hope these alternatives will satisfy the many readers who reached out to me in response to my original column. If not, by all means send me an email with your ideas on grading participation — or even mail me a letter. All forms of participation are welcome, and there will be no grades.
