Rethinking how we "grade" participation

Photo Credit http://www.burfordsurgery.co.uk/Images/PPG.png

Today I read a post on Faculty Focus, "Is it time to rethink how we grade participation" by Dr. Maryellen Weimer. I am inspired by the idea of rewarding engagement instead of grading participation.

The approach is to let the students earn engagement tickets which what they can use to replace a missed homework assignment or to add a point to a major exam or assignment. The reason that I like this approach is that, it changes the mindset completely from being "evaluated" to "rewarded". This raises another question - what behavior would you reward as good class participation?

The quality matters instead of quantity. It is almost impossible to count how many times a student talks in class. And certainly we don't want to encourage students to ask meaningless questions and waste the valuable time of everyone. It is technically easier for you to note who has raised a good question, who has stated a remarkable point, who provides a thoughtful comment that even we ourselves have never thought about, who, perhaps, has given you a good suggestion for the teaching and learning approaches? Overall, it is a matter of their contribution to the their learning in the community.

It very practically solves another issue. Can a good student's mistake be excused? Can we let the students retry one or two assignments and encourage them to correct their mistakes? I do it - although not on a regular basis. The scenario could be a very talented and motivated student who did poorly in an assignment, but wanted to retry it, and get some points back. Mistakes are stepping stones to success. However most of times we offer that "stepping stone"opportunity at our discretion. With these participation reward ticket, it is more fair to the class that students earn these opportunity through their efforts.