Classroom participation, both assessing and grading, can be equally as puzzling as it is exhilarating. Understanding how, why, and when students feel most comfortable to participate is vital in a professor’s participation efforts, as without a comprehensive understanding of the student’s needs in-class activities and classroom engagement activities will certainly underperform. Essentially, this process can be likened to writing without understanding one’s audience, which, at this point, we all know is a severe detriment to the writer. Conversely, understanding the needs of the student and developing effective engagement activities can afford a professor with excellent in class experiences for both the student and professor alike. 

 

Ensuring that professors develop effective means of classroom participation and engagement was the focal point of Rhetoric of Participation’s first chapter, A Curation of Student Voices on Participating in the Writing Classroom. In order to achieve this insight several students were interviewed on their thoughts, habits, and philosophies on classroom participation and policies such as: grading, technology, community, identity, etc. While I’ll spare you the details of each respective section , it can be seen that by gaining personal insight into the preferred habits and ideology of students allowed for the interviewer to develop fantastic insight that allowed for the creation of effective in-class activities and engagement strategies. By opening up a conversation with the student(s) in these interviews, the interviewer was able to comprehend where the students were having trouble participating, why they were having trouble in these areas, and what areas the students preferred to interact with.  

 

What does this mean for us, though? As English and communications professors adjusting to (or back to, depending on level of experience) in person classes, what can this reading tell us about our own classrooms? For me, this reading highlighted the importance of understanding, listening, and adapting. If we are able to listen to the wants, needs, and general feedback of our students on the same level in which they listen to us, we can begin to develop a fantastic understanding of how to facilitate engagement and participation through carefully crafted teaching strategies. This is something that I’ve started to incorporate into my daily lectures, as I often take time to gain feedback and pick the brains of my students, all in hopes to make the next week of content better than the last. 

 

There is no “one size fits all” approach for facilitating engagement and classroom participation. Each student will be different from another, as a result of this, developing an approach that carefully understands their needs and expectations will be most effective. How do we do this, though? Isn’t this difficult? You may ask. The short answer: yes. Yes it is. In my experience, the process of tailoring course content around the students in order to promote interest and participation is a semester-long process. However, most students will appreciate the effort put into understanding their pleasures and gripes with the course content, so the length of this process usually is not of serious issue. Additionally, as previously mentioned, the hope here is that each week’s content is better than the week that preceded it. Including time in your classes to ask your students what they liked about the classwork, homework, in class activities, etc. and implementing this feedback into future content is a sure-fire way to facilitate participation, engagement, and overall happiness throughout a given class. I’ve even gone so far as to ask my students what they would like to do the following class period (so long as it relates to overarching course objectives), and built a lesson plan around their feedback and ideas. This particular example was a fantastic example of how listening to your students can facilitate engagement, as a majority of students participated and seemed to enjoy themselves. 

 

Much can be said for “being a sponge” or sitting back and listening. As professors, we often have a propensity to fill class periods with lectures, in class assignments, etc. While this is certainly a great trait to have, taking a step back and listening to student feedback is a great way to improve essentially any course content in terms of participation and engagement.