Mom: One of the faculty in business at UW, I think, used to have students all give him flash cards with a head shot on one side and their name on the back side, and then carried them around and quizzed himself on the names. He promised an A in the course to anyone whom he couldn’t name by the end of the semester, but never had to deliver on that.

I have to say, although I almost always have a participation component in my courses, it’s really hard to assign a grade to it. Generally, you have a mass of people who you have very little impression of–the ones you remember are those who were most active or who were *completely* silent. While exam grades are generally normally distributed (it always surprises me how they fit to that curve in large classes), participation is almost necessarily a power-law distribution of some sort: 80% are just not going to be active participants.

And then there is the question of what “active participation” might mean. I think that most of the people who talk a lot generally have something good to say, but we’ve all had people in our classes who talk a lot and have nothing worthwhile to say. And then there are those who only say three things during the whole semester, but those three things are absolutely brilliant. I’m clear in my syllabus that “participation” means having something worthwhile and informed to say, but it’s still really difficult to convey that idea.

And some people–extroverts, men, etc.–seem to be disproportionately represented in participation. That’s kind of OK for me, since for many of my courses, a student will do very well in the blogging, but not in class, or the other way around. Multiple learning styles and all that.

You might have them bring in questions that they plan to ask and have them turn them in on slips of paper. Then, even if they don’t get the chance to get their question in, they can at least get credit for thinking of one.

In any case, I don’t think I could as easily abandon traditional grades in a 50-person class, though I might turn to forced ranks as an experiment there.

For spring, I will be planning fewer graded assignments (reviews, essays, research papers, examinations) and will be including “participation” as a significant component of the grade. (Actually, it’s always between 10-15% for my classes; I’m just going to make it a higher percentage in the spring.)

So, how will I measure “participation” in a general education class of 48-60? (Hmmm – thought we were a “small university,” did you? The GE classes are telling…) I think I will learn the students’ names REALLY quickly this semester. Wish me luck-M.