Luke Miratrix, Associate Professor and Co-Faculty Director of the PhD in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaches graduate level statistics and data science courses, including Introduction to Statistical Computing and Data Science in Education and Multilevel and Longitudinal Models. In these courses, Miratrix tasks students with creating individualized participation plans. Early in the semester, each student submits a short essay about their goals for how they intend to engage with the course. Halfway through the term, students write a brief reflection evaluating progress on their goals and making adjustments as desired. At the end of the semester, students complete a one- or two-paragraph self-assessment and assign themselves a participation grade. This grade is reviewed by the teaching team, potentially adjusted, and constitutes the bulk of the full participation grade for the course.
Structuring and grading participation
The benefits
Allowing for different participation plans acknowledges that graduate students have diverse goals for coursework and provides an opportunity for students to communicate those aims to the teaching team. It also recognizes that participation in and contributions to the classroom community can take many forms. Students are given agency in deciding how they want to engage in the course, and many take the assignment as an opportunity to set goals that push them outside their comfort zone, such as to speak more frequently in class, to ask more questions, or to step up to answer other students’ questions on the course’s Slack. The participation plans provide insights about each student for the teaching team and can also be used to evaluate pressure points in the course, which can be used both to adjust the current course and plan for future iterations. They also increase overall engagement and promote a community spirit.
“Participation plans give students an opportunity to decide what participation means to them. By giving them ownership over it, they were engaging in a much better spirit rather than checking a box.”
The challenges
Miratrix has found that participation plans serve both students and the teaching team without much heavy lifting from either group. However, instructors should be mindful about the timing of each component when integrating them into the syllabus to maximize thoughtful engagement and reflection. Additionally, while allowing students flexibility gives them agency, it can be a challenge to balance varied levels of engagement when students are working in teams on group work. It may therefore be beneficial to use participation plans to guide team formation.
Takeaways and best practices
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Honor students’ ways of engaging with your class.
When instructors recognize that student engagement can take many forms and give students the opportunity to set goals for themselves, course participation becomes more authentic. -
Use participation plans as a tool to get to know the students’ aims.
Students take courses with a range of objectives in mind—e.g., to fulfill a requirement, to gain or enhance a skillset, or to obtain space for completing a particular project. Participation plans provide insights into students’ goals, which allows instructors to better tailor the experience to meet their needs. -
Be mindful of biases in self-assessment.
Miratrix notes that research has shown that women and underrepresented minorities tend to understate their contributions, so instructors should call these biases out to students and be attentive to them in evaluating self-assessments.
Bottom line
Participation plans recognize that active participation takes many forms, builds community spirit, and helps make the classroom more inclusive for different learning styles and preferences. Implementing these plans serves both students and instructional teams by allowing students to reflect on and articulate their goals for a course.