“It felt like it really wasn’t an honest assessment or evaluation of participation,” recalls Sample, a professor of digital studies at Davidson College. “I wasn’t clear at the time what participation meant. I think I assumed, and probably most of my students assumed, class participation meant speaking up in class.”
That feeling only grew during the pandemic, as Sample saw why many students would not want to speak up on a Zoom screen. So in the fall of 2021, when in-person learning returned to Davidson, he made two changes.
First, he stopped grading participation as a distinct category.
Second, he redefined what he was looking for, and called it engagement instead. Now at the beginning of every semester, Sample includes in his syllabus this note, which he elaborates on in class.
“Engagement comes in many forms, not just attendance. Taken holistically, engagement includes (but is not limited to) the following:
- Preparation (reviewing readings and material before class)
- Focus (avoiding distractions during in-person and online activities)
- Presence (engaged and responsive during group activities)
- Asking questions (in class, out of class, online, offline)
- Listening (hearing what others say, and also what they’re not saying)
- Specificity (referring to specific ideas from readings and discussions)
- Synthesizing (making connections between readings and discussions)”
I asked Sample if his students’ behaviors changed much after he began using and describing engagement in this way. He said no, but that may be because his students have always been fairly motivated.
“For the most part, there are no big differences because in some ways what this list did was articulate for me where I was already going and what I was already valuing in class,” he said. “I think it just spelled it out more legibly for myself and my students.”
He does remind students throughout the semester why he values engagement. He also does regular check-ins, using a Google form to ask students to reflect on their involvement in the course and what they think they could do better.
“One of the key takeaways,” he said, “is to understand that engagement doesn’t have to be this performative thing they do. It can be this genuine activity that somehow dovetails with their own personality and interests, that lets them enter into the class conversation and ideas in a way that is true to their own personality and interests.”
Last month Sample described his new practice in a tweet that quickly went viral. Other instructors replied that they did something similar. They might call it academic citizenship, class contribution, showing up, active engagement, or contribution to the learning environment.
Several asked Sample how he grades engagement. He explained that in his view, if a student is engaged, then it’s reflected in her work. He says he feels like grading engagement separately is a form of “double jeopardy.”
Grading class participation has always been fraught. James M. Lang, a regular Chronicle columnist, wrote last year about why he stopped doing so, making an argument similar to Sample’s. After some readers argued that grades are a necessary motivator, he suggested in a follow-up column ways to grade participation more fairly.
One is to include in the definition of participation concrete activities that can be tracked and assessed, such as annotating a reading. The other is to ask students, like Sample does, to assess their own levels of engagement midway through the semester. (These self-reflections, he wrote, can also have the positive side effect of increasing participation.)
Do you include class participation or engagement in your grading system? If so, have you found a way to do so that is clear, meaningful, and somewhat objective to both you and your students? If not, do you evaluate participation — or engagement — in another way? Write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your experience may appear in a future newsletter.
Are Your Students Engaged?
On a related note, we’d like to hear from you about what your classrooms have been like so far this semester. Beckie and I have been wondering if the widespread challenges to attendance and participation we heard so much about last spring have continued, or if things seem to be looking up. What have you experienced so far? And how does it compare to last year? Let us know at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and your example may appear in a future newsletter.
ICYMI
- In this Chronicle advice piece, Carol E. Holstead writes about what she learned when she asked her students last spring why they skipped class.
- How do you teach civil discourse in college? The Chronicle’s Sylvia Goodman talked to some professors who attended a Duke University summer seminar on the topic to find out.
- Black, Hispanic, and low-income community-college students who take some of their courses online increase their likelihood of completing an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to a new working paper reported on by Inside Higher Ed.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beth
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