Developing Collaborative Thinkers: Rethinking how we Define,Teach,and Assess Class Participation

Abstract

Introduction:

Class participation is a common component of many college classes and is typically defined as involving students’ active, oral engagement in class.

Statement of the Problem:

Class participation is often an under-utilized pedagogical tool for skill-building and development.

Literature Review:

We present an evidence-based framework that encourages instructors and students to rethink class participation as collaboration. Drawing on a review of over 40 years of research, we argue that this framework for defining class participation will lead to better classroom discussions, academic and social-emotional benefits for students, and prepare students with essential workforce readiness skills.

Teaching Implications:

We describe how instructors can adopt our framework with evidence-based suggestions for: (1) redefining participation as collaboration with explicit criteria (2) structuring course experience to develop students as active collaborators (3) working to build productive classroom teams, and (4) evaluating participation through a collaborative lens.

Conclusions:

We offer a novel framework for redefining participation through a collaborative lens, along with a suite of evidence-based suggestions for shifting the thought processes and behaviors of students toward collaboration.