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Descriptive Criteria for Student Participation

Why?

• Students should know, early in the course, how they will be evaluated on their participation.
• Clear descriptions of the individual elements comprising a participation grade make the assessment process more transparent.
• Defined criteria can be used to focus the feedback process.

Implications for Teaching and Learning.

• Provide description on how the students’ participation in discussion will be assessed.
• Provide the criteria for evaluating the quality of students’ postings.
• Indicate the number of required postings per topic or per week.
• Indicate how the quality of responses to other students will be assessed (rubrics are good choices).
• Clearly show how the relationship between different levels of participation and grades earned for those levels of participation.

Promising Practices for TWU.

• Good practice suggests student interaction is important for distance courses.
• Student participation can be enhanced through clear expectations for student participation.
• Connecting student participation to assessment criterion emphasizes the importance of participation to students.
• Models illustrating exemplary student postings (with proper authorization from the students) can shape subsequent student postings.
• To reduce the tendency for students to post immediately before the due date, require students to post early in the week and then again later in the week.

Example.

I expect students to be present online and contribute to the discussions in a timely manner. Part of your discussion grade is tied to posting before midnight on Wednesday and posting again before midnight on Saturday. Plan your activities to meet those requirements or you will not receive full credit for your postings. See the rubric on discussion posting to see how I mark your participation for the discussion board.

How?

Good practice suggests that students benefit from understanding the expectations for their participation in an online course. Clearly defined expectations with sufficient description clarifies the amount and frequency of participation required for the course.

 - Derived from the Quality Matters (QM) Rubric for Online and Hybrid Courses FY 06/07 Standard III.3 

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