Assessing the different kinds of learning

5. Learner Behaviour and Student "Labour"

Should you assess participation and labor/effort (and other behaviours you deem important)?

This question comes up all the time. That's because we believe participation and effort will improve the chances of student success, and we want our students to succeed.

Firstly, in defense of assessing (or incentivizing) participation and effort:

One of our responsibilities as instructors is to design courses in a way that motivates action. The degree to which you are responsible to do this depends on the context, what kind of learners you have, and what your ultimate hope is for them.
Many of the learning activities you set in front of students require whole-group participation for them to be effective. Hands-on tasks, lab practice, brainstorming...etc. require most, if not everyone to participate. Your class is more than just a bunch of individuals seeking individual goals. It is also a learning community, and learning communities require commitment and engagement from those individuals to the whole. Rewarding it with points can incentive that participation.
Experiential learning requires experience first. Without participation in the experience, students have nothing on which to reflect.
Some outcomes actually target participation - contribute to..., act according to..., respond to..., volunteer to..., etc.
"Grading class participation signals to students the kind of learning and thinking an instructor values" (Bean & Peterson, 1998)

Arguments against assessing participation:

In most cases, participation is a means to the end, not the end itself. Can a student succeed in your course without participating, e.g. can they read the syllabus, the textbook, submit assignments, show up for the exam and pass?
Everyone participates in different ways. You could argue that a student who shows up, sits silently in the back of your class, never checks their device or gets distracted, and fully engages their thinking is a strong participator. Another student who sits in the front, throws their hand up at every opportunity and talks non-stop, might appear "present", but not actually do any learning. Some students are shy and introverted, some are out-going. Marking participation can easily turn into rewarding certain personality types.

If you've decided to assess or reward participation using grades as currency, here are some tips:

Create a learning contract with students at the start of class, and circle back to it throughout the course. A TRIZ (www.liberatingstructures.com) works well here, too. Build the expectations as a learning community.
Have students self-evaluate against a set of criteria and provide evidence to support their score.
Give clear rationale to why participation is necessary, what it looks like, and how it will be graded.
Create tasks and assessments where participation is required in order to be successful, but not directly graded.
Make sure the requirement to participate is explicitly referenced in at least one outcome.

STOP & THINK - What to you think about assessing participation in your course? Can you list three positive participatory behaviours that you would target in your course?