Course participation

• Encourages students to be active participants in classroom activities and prepare for class. 
• Encourages students to reflect on issues and problems that relate to the class. 
• Fosters students’ analytical skills in a supportive environment. 
• Supports students in developing their collaborative and team-working skills (see Hard and RaoShah, 2021, for ways to emphasise collaboration). 

Students can feel marking is subjective (Meyer et al., 2018) and overestimate their contributions (Orwat et al., 2017). Explicit criteria, coupled with self-reflection and feedback, can help with both of these problems, but they may persist. 

This assessment might disadvantage some students: students with English as an additional language; students who are neurodivergent, shy, or experience social anxiety; students who have less experience of seminars and peer discussion. To improve this, teachers can include online asynchronous activities, or seminar activities with a different pace of contribution. For instance:  

• Share discussion questions in advance of the seminar 
• introduce a brief free-writing period after the question is posed  
• implement a card system that allows students to make a set number of responses on a card, which they hand in at the end of the seminar 
• Use an electronic platform such as Mentimeter, a shared online document or a Moodle forum, to gather written student contributions during or after a seminar

• Clear criteria help students to understand what is expected. Criteria should be based on the learning outcomes, explain what is expected, show what this looks like at different levels of attainment, and indicate how marks will be allocated. Criteria should be shared and discussed with students (preferably through an associated activity). 
• Criteria can promote specific behaviours (e.g. asking constructive questions; responding to peers) and discourage excessive uncollaborative speaking. 
• Criteria can be particularly helpful as students may believe that assessment of class participation is overly subjective. 
• Assessing class participation is hard for a teacher working alone as they need to both facilitate and assess the session. Assessing online contributions, or brief written contributions, can lessen this pressure but takes additional staff time. 
• If course participation is a substantial part of your assessment (weighted at 15% or more of the final grade) you will need a resit format which allows students to demonstrate their attainment of the learning outcomes.  

LSE marking normally requires double-marking or moderation, and sharing examples with the external examiner. This may be harder to achieve with in-class participation. For moderation, a colleague can sit in on a proportion of classes. If participation is a component with a lower weighting, then single marking may be possible. 

For a large cohort where multiple class teachers are marking, hold a moderation discussion in advance to discuss the rubric.  

Templates are available in this resource that illustrate the range of ways in which you can assess participation. Consider how the marks will be moderated (can the course convenor sit in on one session with each tutor?) and how the external examiner will be able to evaluate the assessment process. 

In-class participation is relatively low-risk for academic misconduct but students may read from pre-prepared notes, or use generative AI during in-class discussions. 

Guidance for students on writing their engagement plan, to support assessed course particiation on a taught postgraduate programme. Materials devised by Dr Casey Kearney.

A LSE student-led research project offers insights into the student experience of assessed participation (see p5).  

Hard, B. M., & RaoShah, T. (2021). Developing Collaborative Thinkers: Rethinking how we Define, Teach, and Assess Class Participation. Teaching of Psychology, 49(2), 176-184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320986953 (Original work published 2022) 

Meyer, M. L., McDonald, S. A., DellaPietra, L., Wiechnik, M., & Dasch-Yee, K. (2018). Do Students Overestimate Their Contribution to Class? Congruence of Student and Professor Ratings of Class Participation. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 18(3). https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v18i3.21516