{"id":282,"date":"2020-02-16T15:57:32","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T23:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/?p=282"},"modified":"2020-02-16T15:57:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T23:57:32","slug":"the-participation-quandary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/the-participation-quandary\/","title":{"rendered":"The Participation Quandary"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Please note – this is not an assigned activity. This is intended to be an informal exploration of how to capture student participation in my classroom context*<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m in a unique situation currently, as both a student and an instructor. I’ve been struggling with an issue (as an instructor), one that was identified by another cohort member recently as being an issue in this space as a student, too:<\/p>\n

How is student participation captured in a way that reflects actual participation?<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m teaching a planning class this term, one that includes a large-scale assignment in which the class works in teams to put on a big event that the community is invited to, one that is themed around re-framing disability and celebrating diversity. A good part of the mark is based on participation.<\/p>\n

Last year, at the end of the term, I was disappointed in the pieces that showed up as participation marks (mostly based on forum participation) – especially as I know that the students have such rich back-channels (Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, email etc.) and that they work together and support each other in those spaces without my knowledge, in ways that are beyond what shows up within the classroom.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want a window into the back-channels. It’s important for the students to have spaces in which they feel like they can really, honestly sandbox things without any perception that I might see it. Regardless of how democratized our classroom gets, there is still a power imbalance that means I can’t look at what students are doing in those spaces without changing what they will do.<\/p>\n

How do I move from a formulaic place in which I inadvertently encourage them to do the minimum (I’m referring here to the ‘post to the forum, reply to two of your colleagues posts by X date and time’ type criteria)? I’ve not been teaching a long time, but find that type of metric to be a race to the bottom, one that does not capture the ACTUAL interactions between the students in all of the informal ways that they support each other – the interactions on the back-channels. My observation is that, as the students feel somewhat constrained by this forum-measurement piece, they aren’t really able to express their true participatory experiences.<\/p>\n

Switching to my student role for a moment, I’m finding that the most rewarding and interesting conversations are happening in the back-channels with my own cohort. This is where the real interactive, co-constructive learning is happening, learning that is invisible to our own instructors. I can’t help but wonder if my own students are feeling the same way. I intend to ask them about it after reading break.<\/p>\n

What I’m exploring right now is the idea of having them self-assess their participation for the big event assignment, both giving themselves a mark and writing a short explanation as to why they think that mark is appropriate. I’m curious to see whether the back-channel pieces figure more strongly for them than the forum-style interactions, and what students identify as being the places and ways in which they participated most fruitfully (both for themselves, and in service of other students and the assignment). My wondering is whether this will be a more realistic measure of their participation in their teams, in the class as a whole, and the building of the event.<\/p>\n

I’d love to hear from others who have come up against this in their own classrooms, and to hear your challenges and how (and if!) you’ve approached a solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Please note – this is not an assigned activity. This is intended to be an informal exploration of how to capture student participation in my classroom context* I’m in a unique situation currently, as both a student and an instructor. I’ve been struggling with an issue (as an instructor), one that was identified by another … Continue reading The Participation Quandary<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0113\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}