Class Participation (Summer 2018)

Because of the collaborative and discussion-oriented nature of this class, participation is required. However, we understand that requiring participation has a tendency to incite inauthentic participation. Our goal with the participation policy is to give students enough ways to fulfill their participation credit in the way that is most natural and useful to them.

There are a number of different ways to earn participation points. Our goal is for the participation policy to be “invisible” to most students, in that organic participation is sufficient to fulfill these requirements. If you are active on Piazza (e.g. posting high-quality topics or comments a couple times a week) and complete your peer review tasks, you shouldn’t ever need to worry about the participation policy. We expect that for the majority of students, you’ll earn your participation points without really trying.

The following are the ways you may earn participation credit. In some cases, some categories have a maximum number of points that can be earned: the intention is that everyone should complete peer reviews, and therefore it is nearly impossible to satisfy your participation grade without completing the majority of your assigned peer review tasks.

  • 1.5 points: Fulfill* an assigned peer review within 4 days of receiving it (by the end of the day Thursday UTC-12).
  • 1.0 points: Fulfill* an assigned peer review within 7 days of receiving it (by the end of the day Sunday UTC-12).
  • 0.5 points: Fulfill* an assigned peer review 7 days or more after receiving it.
  • 1.0 points: Request and fulfill* an additional peer review. Additional peer reviews can be requested from the assignment page in Peer Feedback.
  • 1.0 points: Complete one of the four course surveys (1.0 points per survey).
  • 0.2 to 3.0 points: Post a high-quality contribution on Piazza (actual point value varies by post). (Maximum 30 points.)
  • 0.5 to 3.0 points: Contribute something new to the course library (actual point value varies by contribution).
  • 0.5: Complete a classmate’s request for project participation (e.g. complete a survey, beta test a tool, participate in an experiment, review some content).
  • Additional points: Additional points may be awarded based on other things that come up (for example, completing a student spotlight or bringing in a guest for a Q&A).

* – Note that for all peer reviews, the peer review itself must be useful; simply filling out the form and writing a sentence or two isn’t sufficient to receive credit for peer reviews. Note some of the exemplary peer reviews from previous semesters to see what qualifies as a good peer review.

Grading Information

Your number of participation points will be averaged out of 100 possible points and included as 15% of your final average. Earning 100 points or above will give 100% of the possible participation credit. To help you track your progress, we will post a participation update halfway through the semester.

Generally, we encourage all students to earn half their participation points by completing their assigned peer reviews within four days and completing the four class surveys; this alone grants 52 participation points. We recommend earning the remaining 44 points by requesting additional peer reviews (up to five per assignment for 40 additional points) and participating in your classmates’ surveys and studies (0.5 points per activity).

There is no mid-semester deadline on participation; you can take entire weeks off if necessary as long as you earn your points at some point during the semester. Most participation categories are reasonably objective (peer reviews, participation tokens, surveys, and library contributions), so you should be able to self-monitor between updates.