Class participation and feedback as enablers of student academic performance

Abstract

In an educational context focused on student learning, class participation and feedback are key to improving students’ performance. Class participation grading methods are often unclear and subjective, therefore, providing feedback on class participation grades is challenging for lecturers. In this study, the Work-In-Class Assessment Tool (WICAT) designed by researchers is a multidimensional system that grades class participation by assessing students’ attendance, active listening, contribution to class activities, and performance in frequent small tasks. The WICAT allows lecturers to clearly and objectively grade class participation while providing students weekly feedback on their in-class performance. This study aims to analyze the effect of the WICAT and weekly feedback on students’ academic performance. The results from an experiment with 699 accounting students over the 2016 to 2019 period showed that students whose class participation grade was obtained through WICAT performed better on the final exam. Furthermore, the results showed that students assessed by WICAT were 2.28 times less likely to fail the final exam. However, the weekly feedback that WICAT allowed did not affect students’ performance. These results have important implications for curriculum designers and teaching staff on how to plan course syllabuses and where to focus in-class efforts.

Assessing class participation in physical and virtual spaces: current approaches and issues

“…Web-based student response systems enable students to respond to teachers' questions, receive feedback, and view their classmates' responses in real-time, thereby enhancing interactivity in the classroom and giving students room to self-assess (Heaslip et al, 2013;Persaud and Persaud, 2019). This is beneficial since researchers have highlighted the critical role of timely feedback in assessing class participation (Márquez et al, 2023), to allow students to engage in corrective actions (Macfarlane, 2016). These web-based systems are also ideal for use in large classes where time constraints are often an issue.…”

“…However, there are barriers to objectively assessing class participation. A seminal article by Armstrong and Boud (1983) discussed the problems commonly encountered in grading participation, and evidence suggests that most of these problems in assessing participation persist at present (Márquez et al, 2023). Some of the challenges include subjectivity, reliability, and the unintended detrimental effect of some methods of assessment used by instructors on the quality of class discussions (Armstrong and Boud, 1983;Bean and Peterson, 1998;Xu and Qiu, 2022).…”

The Teachers’ Effective English Listening Comprehension Strategies for Senior High School Students

“…Arum Putri Rahayu students who rank in the class, although not specifically mentioned, it showed that they really put the high efforts to master each subject studied." (Mamoon-Al-Bashir et al, 2016), (Márquez et al, 2023) suggests that grades are essential for providing feedback to students, and when grading is specific to the content being taught, it can lead to improved performance. Gray & Diloreto, (2016) found that students who received comments tailored to their performance showed a significant increase in their scores on a task, while those who received only grades or both grades and comments experienced declines in their scores.…”