Participation

Spoken participation is very important for this class since one of our main learning objectives is to improve students’ ability to verbalize their thoughts and assesments, as well as logically discuss/ debate. Nothing can be evidence unless it is placed in a logical argument, and class is meant to let you practice this faculty.

Discussing readings is difficult and needs to be practiced before it becomes natural. It also requires preparation (reading, thinking and taking notes) to make our discussions be productive. This is a skill that we will practice all year, so that (hopefully!) everyone will be comfortable doing it by the end of first term.

Students will be expected to speak in class, discuss assigned readings, explain their thinking and present their reseach. Students can also participate by engagement on Teams, meeting up with fellow students, as well as annotations made on Perusall.

During the course, we will be taking attendence. This information will be used to evaluate your self-assessments.

At minimum, students are expected to have done the reading and thought through necessary question and answers, and be willing to talk about them (out loud). Students are expected to engage during the course to identify key themes and issues, evaluate the authors’ positions/reasoning/logic, ask and answer questions from classmates and the professor, etc.

• Normally, this takes place in person – during class lectures and small group discussions, and through one-on-one interaction with the professor and TA (office hours, conversations before/after class).

• I suspect that we will experiment with a number of different methods of trying to elicit student engagement during class before landing on those that work the best for us.

Be Prepared

The most important part of participation is being prepared. You might be willing to contribute and be able to speak persuasively, but this does not contribute if you have not read and thought about the materials assigned for each class. To help with this, you are asked to make annotations on the readings each week.

How Else to Participate

Our plan is to give students a wide variety of opportunities to actively participate in the course. In fact, students may actually have more ways to show participation in this online model. Students will be able to actively participate through the following :

• Annotation and commenting on Perusall.

  • Students are asked to read, comment on and reflect on the textbook readings (and additional assigned/optional texts) via Perusall.

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• Q+A periods during class time

  • Students will be encouraged to add questions/comments throughout lectures; during mid-lecture Q+A periods, the prof will pick several questions/comments to discuss further/respond to.

• Small group breakout sessions during class

  • At some point during classes, students will be broken up into small breakout groups (for factions) to discuss a particular question/theme, after which groups will be invited to report back to the full class.

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• Discussions with prof during office hours

General principles of evaluation:

Given the variety of factors that might impact a given student’s ability to participate fully and consistently through any one of these methods (and to ensure that the professor can be as flexible as possible accommodating students’ specific situations), participation will be understood holistically. That is to say, participation is viewed as the sum total of a student’s participation through all of the above (and other) methods – meaning that it is possible for students to successfully satisfy their participation mark without engaging in all types of participation every week. While I will keep track of my assessments of your participation, you ultimately are responsible for assessing your participation.

In general, here are some examples of the type of questions students will be asked to think about in evaluating their participation:

• Did you attend class?

• Did you remain focused during the class and did you seek to actively listen/process/integrate the ideas during class discussions?

• Did you participate in class discussion?

• Did you demonstrate significant and insightful knowledge regarding class material (have you been able to consistently answer questions about the readings in class, pose thoughtful questions in/outside of class, demonstrated that you have attempted to connect the themes/ideas of class to the outside information, etc)?

• Did the student enhance the learning environment by participating respectfully in discussions with her/his colleagues?

While you will be asked to self-evaluate your participation, your instructors and teaching assistant will keep track of their subjective evaluation of your work.

• First, in each class, the professor will track and record attendance and observable forms of participation– including live questions/comments; comments/questions on Teams (outside of classtime); discussions in breakout groups; etc.

• Second, four times a year, students will self-assess their work in formal "Process Letters".

If the professor assesses that a student has consistently (i.e. in every class) participated at an exceptional level throughout the term, the professor may decide to reward bonus marks, above what the student has self-assessed.