
Developing Collaborative Thinkers: Rethinking how we Define, Teach, and Assess Class Participation
Introduction: Class participation is a common component of many college classes and is typically defined as involving students’ active, oral engagement in class. Statement of the Problem: Class participation is often an under-utilized pedagogical tool for skill-building and development. Literature Review: We present an evidence-based framework that encourages instructors and students to rethink class participation as collaboration. Drawing on a review of over 40 years of research, we argue that this framework for defining class participation will lead to better classroom discussions, academic and social-emotional benefits for students, and prepare students with essential workforce readiness skills. Teaching Implications: We describe how instructors can adopt our framework with evidence-based suggestions for: (1) redefining participation as collaboration with explicit criteria (2) structuring course experience to develop students as active collaborators (3) working to build productive classroom teams, and (4) evaluating participation through a collaborative lens. Conclusions: We offer a novel framework for redefining participation through a collaborative lens, along with a suite of evidence-based suggestions for shifting the thought processes and behaviors of students toward collaboration.
Duke Scholars
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- 1701 Psychology
- 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy
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Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Education
- 1701 Psychology
- 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy