Class Participation

Class participation, quite a controversial subject in University.

It is extremely prevalent a criteria in modules in the University, particularly for Business modules. This is actually to encourage students to clarify their doubts and to be more involved in discussions. This will probably be a valuable skill when you head out to work.


It is quite useful I must say, maybe because it occupies a substantial percentage of your overall grade, people tend to get panicky and anal about it. They start to speak up for the sake of getting marks.


But here comes the problem, some of them actually speak up but the questions they ask are inconsistent and irrelevant, sometimes even absurd to the extent that we have absolutely no idea what he/she is even talking about in the first place.


This happens usually when people are desperate for class participation marks, they ask questions for the sake of asking and end up self destructing themselves when they are lost in the track of thought.


As a result, the other classmates are left to a cringing moment where we do not know whether to save her or leave the awkward atmosphere as it is. It is quite disturbing at times really.


There was this girl in class today, she tried to ask a question and the worse part was that she was speaking so loudly and her voice seemed to be trembling. Then she lost herself halfway, then she tried to make a comeback and she ended up lost again. It was literally all over the place with no links at all. To be honest, she's quite poor thing because she was talking so loud that the whole class was silent. So, can you imagine how embarrassing it is for everyone to stare at you and that you lost yourself.


So is class participation good or bad? Overall, in balance, I will say that its definitely effective but tutors should not reward participation marks for questions that are irrelevant or absurd. They should be judging on the effectiveness and quality of the question/answer instead. However, many a times, tutors tend to just put a tick when someone speak up because they themselves are too lazy to judge if that's a good answer or a bad one.