Re-evaluate participation
By Conor Bell
Oct. 7, 2010 11:10 p.m.
As the professor reads aloud the class goals during the first lecture of Week One, some students listen with rapt attention, following each word on the syllabus with their index finger. The rest of us feverishly flip to the back of the syllabus to find the grading section and the solution to one of the questions we so desperately need answered: whether or not there’s a participation section of the grade.
UCLA students love participation grades for their ease, but the most common methods of evaluating involvement do little to actually engage students. Professors should improve their courses by changing the way they grade participation.
With discussion sizes now reaching more than 30 people, it has become impossible for teaching assistants to qualitatively measure a student’s participation. If there is a portion of the grade devoted to participation, it’s likely to be free points for being in the classroom during discussion section.
Chien-Ling Liu, a TA in the history department, said she increasingly weighs written analysis of the week’s readings and overall improvement in the class, but admits that bigger classes hamper participation.
“The time that I can pay attention to a student is less, and the frequency that they can speak is less,” Liu said.
When there is no participation section of a grade, I interpret it as a signal from the professor that discussion sections are optional.
Participation grades feel like a holdover from my high school Spanish class, where you had to answer at least one generic question a day like “¿Como esta usted?” And just like in Spanish class, all I have to do is answer in the right language.
As a student seeking to obtain a degree with minimal effort, this system seems too good to be true. As a student seeking to learn at one of the most respected universities in the world, it’s a little disappointing.
I value my education enough to be frustrated when professors don’t trust TAs to grade participation. I don’t pay to attend UCLA for the same classroom experience I would get at an online university. I chose this school because there’s supposed to be an exchange of ideas on campus.
It may sound contradictory: I don’t like having participation and I won’t get rid of it. That’s because the solution is to rethink how participation is evaluated.
Statistics professor Robert Gould uses an interactive “clicker” system in his lectures, which takes attendance while allowing students to participate in lecture. Students simply press a button on these small handheld devices to answer a multiple choice question, then see the results of their entire class’ response on the lecture slide in front of them.
After a year of using clickers, Gould is pleased with the new chance to evaluate participation, even in a lecture class with hundreds of students.
“I’m much more interested in improving the quality of participation rather than the grading of participation,” Gould said. “Clickers provide a relatively easy way to increase the participation level in class, and give credit to students for doing so.”
However, the simplest way of handling the participation problem I have encountered is a short pop quiz at the end of discussion, even lecture, a few times a quarter. Students go to discussion because they don’t want to miss the quiz. The quality of the discussion is improved because students are trying to pick each others’ brains on possible quiz questions.
These smaller, more frequent evaluations give professors a chance to test student knowledge of material that can’t be fit onto the midterm or final. They also allow students to get some feedback on their progress before that first midterm, which can be invaluable in the fast-paced quarter system.
While the slacker in me would resent the loss of free points or optional discussions, I would appreciate the small checkpoints that prevent course loads from turning into a pile of procrastination that lead to sleepless nights during fifth and 10th week. Having such meaningful discussions would produce a measurable improvement in my knowledge of the subject.
That’s something the academic in me would be relieved to have once again.
For further discussion e-mail Conor at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].
