Ad-Libs | Course investment, not class participation

There is an epidemic among us — the epidemic of intelligent people saying stupid things in class just to participate. It runs rampant on college campuses around the country, but especially at large, competitive universities like Penn.

Students must make an effort to contribute to a tolerable classroom experience. Some advice: Class is probably not a good environment to ask about your own personal development. It’s also ill suited for story time, especially if the tale has little relevance. Class is also not the best place for asking questions about professors’ e-mails, because e-mails come with a built-in reply button.

But mainly, I blame the overzealous oratory epidemic on the participation percentage that professors often include toward the final grade. It’s often small (somewhere between 5 to 15 percent), but large enough to make people utter nonsensical things to achieve an A — and make the rest of us want to bang our heads against the wall. And when some take over, others can’t get in a word and end up with too low a grade.

I’m not the only one looking into issues with professors’ handling of class participation. The Undergraduate Assembly has taken interest in the topic recently, e-mailing a survey asking students what their feelings are on class participation. One purpose of the survey is to make the professors aware of the results. “We don’t want to take away the autonomy of the professors,” Wharton junior and UA Academic Affairs Director Faye Cheng said. “We just want to help enhance collaboration in the classroom.”

There are teachers who agree that the participation percentage can bring out the worst in students. “You can tell when a student is just freestyling,” Africana Studies and Graduate School of Education lecturer Brian Peterson said. “Sometimes students monopolize the discussion without realizing.”

Some professors have teaching styles that combat the problem of overparticipation. They use the Socratic method to show students they don’t make any sense, or they run such a tight ship in class that anything other than answers to specific questions are unacceptable.

However, these tactics aren’t perfect either. Sometimes these classes could benefit from dialogue about the material, and its sad such participation is restricted. Total or limited banishment of participation doesn’t solve the problem — it just stifles it.

So instead of excessive or inhibited class participation, professors should replace the participation percentage with one that is more versatile and inclusive. Professors should grade students’ overall course investment.

Course investment would still be a way to gauge enthusiasm outside of midterms, finals and papers. But it would be different from class participation because it would place less emphasis on talking in class and more on engaging with material. A lot of classes already have online forums that count toward your grade or take into consideration off-campus trips relating to course content, but practices like this could be more widespread.

With a course investment grade instead of a participation grade, more students would have the opportunity to shine. Gone would be the students hurt by their peers who turn class into their own one-man or one-woman show.

More importantly, course investment would incorporate signs of genuine interest in a topic, whether it be relating a current event to an aspect of the class or be as small as asking a question that brings theoretical material to real life.

Course investment would be harder to measure than participation, but at the very least, it would discourage participating just for the hell of it, especially to everyone else’s detriment. Professors will probably always try to quantify this section of our grade, but if the section itself is more holistic, it could lead to a better class environment for all.

Especially because I can’t sit through yet another class where my delusional classmate thinks he’s the professor.

Adrienne Edwards is a College sophomore from Queens, New York. Her e-mail address is edwards@theDP.com. Ad-Libs appears on Wednesdays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.