Education Commons^™

Why & How Instructors Grade Participation In, Susan L. Rogers

NERA Conference Proceedings 2009

Although active engagement and participation in college courses has been shown to lead to increased learning (Weaver & Qi, 2005), instructors often struggle to get their students to participate more in class. This issue is sometimes addressed by including "participation" in grading criteria. The current study investigates this convention by identifying current instructor attitudes and practices towards grading student participation in undergraduate classrooms. To this end, a survey has been created and piloted amongst university instructors of varying disciplines. Data is presented in the context of current literature, and relationships between attitudes and practices in grading participation will be explored.