Seminar Participation Assessment
Weekly Participation Grades
Participation is egalitarian at its core, so it should be celebrated and enjoyed, not feared. There are two things that students fear about participation.
The first fear – it is keyed to a grading rubric. While this must be true for seminar, it is important to recognize that all learning is gained through questions and failing more than it is with statements and winning.
The second fear is to be mistaken: to say the wrong thing, to be seen to misapprehend something. We all do that at some point – what’s more – we all know that we all do this! Yet that fear persists. This is entirely understandable because being embarrassed is awful. However, this notion is NOT based on participation, but rather competition. That is the antithesis of the seminar. We are not here to compete but to collaborate. We are not here to create a hierarchy, we are here to appreciate each other, to learn from each other, and to feel the support of a community.
This requires some risk on the part of students, but that risk is countered and ameliorated by the knowledge that no one will belittle you and your reputation in the class will not be tarnished. No one is brilliant all the time.
So, an anecdote is called for. Do you remember learning to ride a bike? Learning to swim? Learning the alphabet? Did you get it right the first time? I didn’t. I remember my scuffed knees and gulping swimming pool water. I also remember being thrilled at gaining that new skill. Those positive memories overshadow the process of learning through failing. Children are accepting of their need to try again. In school, we are taught that this is wrong, that we cannot tolerate the need to try twice. Let’s dispense with this punitive idea of education and move on towards a horizontal pedagogy.
In our class meetings, here is what I expect:
We all come to class prepared.
Respecting each other is the key to creating a comfortable, inclusive community in our (virtual) classroom. What is crucial here is that you can commit to this and yet not let go of the ability to dissent from a prevailing opinion, if appropriate for you. Critical thinking enables the individual by harnessing intelligence, insight and questioning. It takes intellectual honesty to admit you don’t know about something. This is the hallmark of wanting to learn.
By definition, seminar is participatory. It is admittedly nuanced; while you must play a part in class discussions, you must not take over the class; your contributions should be evidence of critical thinking, but you should also have the ability to respond in real-time.
How will I grade participation?
I use a spreadsheet that tracks your contributions to the class, and categorizes them as
Initiating;
Questioning;
Answering;
Collaborating/Leadership.
The categories are not ranked in a hierarchy. Each contribution gains a point. Points accrue and at the end of the semester, I use the curve of class participation to establish an overall participation grade for each student.
IMPORTANT: Quantity can impact quality positively or negatively. Avoid quantitative extremes of too much or too little. If a student speaks very rarely, it can be very difficult for professors to judge the quality of his or her contributions because of the lack of quantity. If a student speaks too frequently, it can degrade his or her Collaboration or Leadership score. Use of the Text, for example, is NOT about quoting the text superficially 50 times per class. It’s about using the text in a consistently effective and succinct manner.