Regardless of the major, every student in class shares the same moment: raising their hand.
The professor asks a question. The room goes silent. The tiles on the floor become the most interesting thing in the room. Someone coughs, while another person excuses themselves and goes for a walk. In that awkward pause, a dozen students start calculating whether they’ve spoken enough this week in order to get a good grade for participation.
This is not a learning environment. It is a terrifying performance.
According to Edutopia, participation grades are meant to encourage students to speak up, be active listeners, or contribute to meaningful conversations. In theory, teachers reward students for showing up prepared and contributing to collective learning; however, they often do something else. They turn the classroom into a performance.
Speaking becomes less about the knowledge you have, but more about visibility.
The question lies in why students dislike participating in class. Is it really a performance?
Rocio Urquia, a junior political science major, said she believes that participation should not be heavily graded.”
Her reasoning relies on the fact that, in her view, class participation “Depends on the type of class,” and if the class is more difficult, “it’s harder to participate.”
At some point, participation stops measuring engagement and measures more of the comfort with speaking out in public.
Vanessa Nazaire, a junior 3+3 political science and law major, said she dreads seeing “how a professor grades participation.” Although she is always attentive in class, she worries that “not saying anything in class will lower her grade.”
This fear of participation has become a more common issue among students. It has become an unspoken rule in most classrooms. Talk too little and you risk being labeled as not attentive. Talk too much and you become the person who rambles.
In a study done by John C. Bean and Dean Peterson on classroom participation grades at Seattle University, they analyzed the different types of students in a participation setting. According to the study, there are six different types of students in a classroom. In their third analysis, it explains how there are students who come prepared, but do not speak up out of anxiety.
Nazaire mentions how participation can be risky. You risk interrupting the professor, or worse, “When they [professors] ignore your raised hand so they can finish the lecture slides.”
Urquia has a similar problem; However, she states that when the professor asks a question and wants everyone to add something, she “feels uncomfortable” because she is forced to speak up.
Ashley Thorne, a writer at the National Association of Scholars, shares this idea. She explains how professors should reconsider their emphasis on participation grades because students can often feel uncomfortable or pressured to participate.
The pressure to participate does not necessarily create better discussions. Students rehearse comments in their heads, waiting for the right moment to say something that they believe is worthy. Others repeat things they have already said, but in different words. Silence, even when it shows that you are listening, is rarely rewarded.
None of this is to say that discussion does not matter, but engagement does not always happen out loud. According to the University of Connecticut, there are existing alternative ways to account for engagement instead of speaking in class.
Some examples they list are in-class X (formerly Twitter) participation or email participation. At Seton Hall, teachers use Canva discussion posts to facilitate online participation. This is where students send in ideas on different platforms to show that they are listening, they are engaged, but they do not want to speak out.
Furthermore, Nazaire and Urquia also suggested some alternative ideas for participation.
Nazaire says that if she could choose how to show engagement, she would like to submit screenshots of her annotated readings or class notes, emphasizing that she takes notes on things that are not always on the board, which proves she is an active listener.
Urquia said she enjoys group discussions or in-class projects.
She explains further that she had a professor who let the students create a jam-board activity in person. Each student had a sticky note that they put on the whiteboard to show participation.
College classrooms should not feel like high-stress performances where students are nervous about speaking up. They should be places where speaking is meaningful, not something mandatory for keeping an A in the class.
Rocio Urquia, who was interviewed for this article, is also a writer for The Setonian.
Amelia Wysonczanski is a writer for The Setonian’s Opinion section. She can be reached at amelia.wysoczanski@student.shu.edu
