Education Commons^™

Balancing Student Participation In Large College Courses Via Randomized Credit For Participation, Daniel Fox Mccleary

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study was an extension of research reported by Krohn (2010), which showed that daily credit for self-reported participation in designated credit units tended to balance participation across students (i.e., fewer non-participants, more credit-level participants, and fewer dominant participants). The purpose of the current study was to determine if similar results would be achieved by randomly selecting half of the discussion days in designated credit units for participation credit.

The study was done in 3 large sections of an undergraduate class (approximately 54 students per class). Students self-recorded their in-class comments each day on specially designed record cards. At …

Effects Of Random And Delayed Participation Credit On Participation Levels In Large College Courses, Kathleen Briana Aspiranti

Doctoral Dissertations

This study was directed toward improving the balance and consistency of student participation by thinning, randomizing, and delaying credit for student participation. Each of three sections of a large college course (n = 55) employed a different contingency for choosing the days in which participation credit was awarded: (1) credit units identified ahead of time, (2) credit units announced at the end of the course, and (3) credit units randomly selected by students at the end of the course. For all contingencies, random selection of 2 out of 4 discussion days in each credit unit occurred at the conclusion of …