What do the students say? Integrating student input into participation assessment

Abstract

The assessment of participation in the classroom has been at the center of debate among pedagogy scholars and instructors for decades, and the discussion gained new traction after the push towards remote learning during the COVID pandemic. Despite the surge of movements advocating to step away from traditional grading systems, this type of assessment is often deemed necessary in settings such as university-level language classes. Moreover, instructors do not always have influence on programmatic decisions, including whether or not to assess participation. This practice report presents two attempts to account for students’ needs and perspectives when assessing participation in the foreign language classroom by actively involving them in the participation assessment process. One approach consisted of the systematic self-assessment and open dialogue of the weekly participation grade, which was then factored into the instructor’s weekly assessment grade. The second approach used student input to create the rubric, which all students then agreed to, and allowed for discussion with the instructor. These two approaches were well-received by students, and regular mid-semester student surveys suggested that the novel approaches promoted a sense of fairness in the classroom and stimulated both willingness to participate (WTP) and to communicate (WTC).