Rethinking Participation: Valuing Silent, Sounded, and Everything-In-Between Contributions
A Brief Guide to Defining & Grading Participation
When we think of classroom participation, we tend to position oral contributions as the primary, and best, means for students to demonstrate their learning. We overvalue overt and obvious displays of participation, thereby undervaluing the necessary flip side: listening attentively, being fully present, and avoiding dominating the discussion. A student’s silence does not necessarily imply a lack of learning or interest. Head nodding, taking notes, turning one’s body toward the speaker, a pause—without these behaviours and gestures, class discussion would feel very awkward, or possibly even become immobilized. Participative classrooms need both silent and sounded contributions.
While oral participation opportunities can empower students to have a voice in the classroom, learn the academic discourse of their discipline, and allow for a multiplicity of voices, we need to be sensitive to students’ backgrounds. Some students may not wish to be forced into the formal speaking conventions of the academy but equally feel as though their own style of communication is not welcome. Others come from cultures in which it is not the norm to speak in class or question the instructor (White, 2011). Providing non-oral means of participation will mean that students will not be unduly disadvantaged if they wish not, or feel unable, to participate orally.
It is important that we do not assume that our own norms for participation are also those of all our students (Bondura, 2021). By broadening the definition of participation, we can recognize that meaningful engagement can take many forms—verbal, non-verbal, textual, gestural—ensuring that all students have a variety of opportunities to participate beyond the traditional means. We invite you to reflect on what participation means to you in your own courses, and why, by considering some of the approaches below for rethinking, supporting, and assessing participation in a more holistic, inclusive way.
Developing oral classroom participation
Participation can be seen as a skill to be developed, ideally through scaffolded practice and coaching, rather than grounded in innate personality traits, solely (Gillis, 2019.) If oral participation is intrinsic to your learning outcomes, try incorporating the following approaches to help support its development in your class:
Provide students with the questions or prompts ahead of class to give students time to prepare their thoughts and remarks.
Ground class discussion in student-created discussion prompts based on the readings. This promotes deeper thinking about the material, which can, in turn, lead to greater confidence in talking about it in class.
Provide some quiet time during class for reflection or for students to write down thoughts prior to discussion (for example, one version of this approach is think-pair-share: each student “thinks” individually for a short time, then they “pair” up with the person sitting beside them and “share” their thoughts with each other, and possibly the whole class.
Invite students to engage orally with one another in pairs or small groups before sharing with the whole class, and encourage them to consider if they agree or disagree with their peer’s opinion or perspective. In this case, one person in the group or pair can be prepared to debrief with the whole group.
For students who might wish to participate orally but find the classroom environment overwhelming or intimidating, invite students to attend your office hours to discuss course material or to ask a question (you can incentivize office hour visits by awarding marks for doing so). This might be the necessary scaffolded step for the student to feel more comfortable speaking in class.
Thinking of participation as a conversation that includes everyone, not a question/answer volley between instructor and the quickest-to-speak students, can help highlight the importance of oral interactions in the learning process and create a more comfortable atmosphere for participation.
Text and non-verbal forms of participation
Non-oral approaches enable opportunities for students who are shy, anxious, or introverted, whose first language is different from the language of instruction, or whom are from equity-deserving groups demonstrate their engagement. Other factors may also constrain verbal participation, such as course materials, classroom size and seating arrangements, necessitating more non-verbal opportunities to participate. Consider these approaches:
Providing short, in-class writing assignments, or written reflection on a course reading (or notebook/journal reflections on class discussions [Bean and Peterson, 1998]) which could possibly be read aloud.
Contribution to group worksheets, low-stake quizzes, and/or answering polling questions in class. (Lang 2021).
Preparation of research findings (for a problem-based learning course, for example) or annotating pre-class readings (Miller et al. 2018).
Use of digital response systems (for example, Top Hat or Microsoft forms) for students to submit anonymous (or attributed) reflections, questions, or answers, in real time, which can be displayed and discussed collectively for immediate feedback and class-wide discussion of responses. This is particularly useful for large classes.
Setting the stage for grading participation
Providing a welcoming and inclusive environment that encourages everyone to participate in whatever way best suits their learning is integral to setting the stage for grading participation. Participation opportunities relevant to students’ lived experience can encourage engagement and allow the expression of multiple voices and perspectives, further supporting all students’ learning. Be clear and transparent in writing (e.g., rubrics, syllabus, etc.), and orally, during class, about how class participation will be graded. Provide examples of what participation can look like in your course, and ensure that there are opportunities for practice, making mistakes, and risk-taking without penalties. Share the benefits of participation explicitly with your students and model them, yourself.
Take a deeper dive with some answers to common questions about assessing participation, attendance and engagement (see also the References and list of useful websites at the bottom of this page):
-
Reflect on the benefits of different kinds of participation for the learning in your course before deciding to grade participation. If oral participation is a learning outcome in your course (or a learning outcome explicitly depends upon oral participation), then grading it makes sense. Clarify for students why oral participation is a necessary skill to be developed in this course and what it might look like. For example, a law student may need to learn how to deliver a concise oral argument. A health/medicine student may need to be able to communicate orally with other health and medical professionals and patients in their care. A student learning a foreign language will very likely need to practice spoken as well as written communication as part of their learning. Whatever the nature of the oral participation, as noted above, ensure that students are provided formative, low-stakes ways to develop into the expectations of oral expression your course has for them.
If oral participation is not explicitly related to your learning outcomes, consider “un-grading” participation. Students may be extrinsically encouraged to participate orally when a mark is involved, but that may not convince all students to engage in this way (Foster et al. 2009). As Talbert (2023) has noted, “…[w]ith the pressure and allure of grades removed, students are free to explore, experiment, and immerse themselves in the kind of deep learning that alternative grading systems support.” Setting clear expectations for participation and asking students to reflect on the extent they meet these expectations from week to week, can encourage intrinsic motivation to participate. The external motivation of grades may push students into performing participation, rather than doing it as a genuine act of interested engagement.
-
Attendance should not be graded unless it is tied to a learning outcome in your course. Instead, you might consider emphasizing explicitly for your students why attendance is an important advantage for their learning and success in the course, and how participation is defined and graded in your course. We may, however, need to track attendance in some contexts (for example, internships). We might also want to track attendance to help us identify student patterns of absence so that an instructor would know to reach out to a student to offer additional support.
-
Grading participation can be more open to bias than other forms of graded work. A student’s grade may suffer because of your own imperfect memory of students’ participation from week to week, or from your unconscious ideas about what “good” participation looks like. Keep in mind that the larger a class, the more difficult it becomes for every student to participate orally. Students may also be less experienced in oral participation if they are members of equity-deserving groups, are neurodivergent, or have a disability.
Consider the following approaches:
Grade participation holistically, reflecting overall course participation from various vantage points (faculty, student, and peers).
Have a participation rubric that tracks the quality of participation, not the number of times a student participates.
Enable individualized participation plans by providing students with options regarding how they can obtain their participation grade.
Consider not only the content a student contributes to the discussion, but also their ability to be respectful and supportive of others’ ideas and contributions and how they respond to disagreements that may arise.
Whatever approach you take, you should be able to justify the grade you give with evidence.
-
Weighting of a course participation grade may depend on its value or emphasis as a learning outcome in your course, as well as how it’s defined. You may consider providing students with an option of how much weight their participation grade will be worth in their final grade, re-weighting another assessment component in lieu of a more, or less, substantial participation grade. In this approach, students should be provided with guidelines and/or constraints on their choice of weighting. Alternatively, participation could be divided between oral and written forms of participation (Note: The Faculty of Graduate Studies stipulates that graduate courses must not normally exceed 20% of the final grade for a participation mark [see here].)
Who assigns the participation grade?
If you are using individualized participation plans, student and instructor work collaboratively to develop rubric criteria and assess the meeting of those criteria. Alternatively, consider asking students to create participation goals for your course and then write a reflection, self-assessing their own participation. In this way, students engage metacognitively with the idea of participation, in general, and with their own participation, specifically.
If a substantial amount of group work is included in your course, or there is a class presentation component, consider including a peer-review component for the participation grade, too.
Key times to provide participation grades
Consider providing a mid-term participation grade so students know where they stand and why. Outline how they might improve over the rest of the term. (Note: The Faculty of Graduate Studies requites that a participation grade over 10% requires mid-term feedback to assist students improving during the rest of the term [see here].)
When assigning a participation grade at the end of a course, do so before you grade the final exam or project, using the participation rubric shared with students at the outset of the course. Refrain from using a participation grade as “a chance to move student final grades to ‘where they should be’.” (Watson, 2019).
References
Bean and Peterson, 1998. “Grading Classroom Participation”. New Directions in Teaching and Learning, #74, Summer, 33-40.
Bondura, Valerie, “What is a participation grade? Inclusive Strategies for Engaging Students and Assessing participation” in Teaching Gradually: Practical Pedagogies for Graduate Students, by Graduate Students. (ed) Kacie. L. Armstrong et. al. Taylor & Francis Group, 2021.
Foster, Lisa N. et al. 2009. “Increasing Low-Responding Students’ Participation in Class Discussion”, Journal of Behavioural Education. 18:173-188.
Gillis, Alanna, 2019 “Reconceptualizing Participation Grading as Skill Building”, Teaching Sociology. Vol. 47(1), 10-21.
Lang, J. M. (2021). “Should we stop grading class participation?” The Chronicle of Higher Education. April 9,2021.
Lang, J. M. (2021). “Two ways to fairly grade class participation.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 17, 2021.
Miller, Kelly et al. (2018) “Use of a Social Annotation Platform for Pre-Class Reading Assignments in a Flipped Introductory Physics Class.” Frontiers in Education (Lausanne), Vol 3.
Remedios, Louisa, David Clarke and Lesleyanne Hawthorne, 2008. “The silent participant in small group collaborative learning contexts”. Active learning in Higher Education. Vol 9(3):2-12-16.
Talbot, Robert, “Prioritizing Participation: Three ways to elicit great participation without grading it.” Grading for Growth. Dec 04, 2023. https://gradingforgrowth.com/p/prioritizing-participation
Ellen Watson, “Common Forms of Assessment: Participation and Professionalism Grades”, Centre for Learning and Teaching, University of Alberta. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/media-library/resources/assessment/assessment-participation.pdf
White, John Wesley (2011) “Resistance to Classroom Participation: Minority students, Academic Discourse Cultural Conflicts, and Issues of Representation in Whole Class Discussion, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 10:4, 250-265.
Useful Website Resources:
Natasha Kenny, “A Holistic, Learner-Centred Approach to Assessing Student Participation”, Nov 18, 2014. University of Calgary. https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/holistic-learner-centred-approach-to-assessing-students
Beth McMurtrie, “Teaching: Is it time to redefine class participation?” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Sept 8, 2022. https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/teaching/2022-09-08?nl-qs=info-note
“Assessing student participation and attendance” University of Saskatchewan. https://teaching.usask.ca/articles/2023-02-16-assessingstudentparticipation.php
“Promoting Effective Classroom Participation” University of Waterloo.