In-Class Attendance and Participation

In-Class Attendance and Participation#

Active participation in the class is a key element of this course. The class is designed according to a “flipped classroom” model, meaning that lectures aren’t used to repeat facts that you can learn from the textbook. Instead, everyone comes to class already exposed to the material, and we use the time interactively, focusing on discussion and critical analysis. In-person interaction has two key components: exposure to arguments by your peers, and making such arguments yourself.

  1. Exposure to Peer Arguments   Much of each class will be dedicated to discussions, and even if you watch quietly, you’ll be exposed to a wide variety of different arguments from your peers.

  2. Active Participation   Of course, you’ll learn the most by making your own arguments, responding critically to ideas you hear from your instructor and peers. Given the size of the class, it won’t be possible for everyone to speak every session. We’ll thus assess your participation by the number of times you raise your hand to speak rather than the number of times you speak.

How We’ll Choose People To Speak In Class   You’ll press a button in Mechanical TA every time you want to contribute to a discussion. Every time the instructor wants to call on someone they’ll press a button, selecting one student at random (identifying them to the instructor by name and UBC Card photo) and recording  everyone who raised their hand for participation purposes. Some key details:

  • If you’re chosen to speak, you will not be chosen to speak again during the same class unless the only hands raised are from students who have already spoken. However, you’ll automatically get participation points as though you raised your hand throughout the remainder of the class.

  • If you have nothing to say, and clearly just raised your hand for points rather than to contribute to the discussion, you’ll get zero points for the entire day, regardless of how many other points you might have been awarded earlier that day.

  • If you use MTA to raise your hand while not physically present in the class, this will be treated as a case of academic misconduct and serious penalties will apply. TAs will be able to see a real-time list of which students have put their hands up along with their UBC Card photos, and may verify physical attendance even for students who are not called upon.

How Participation Affects Your Grade  Participation is worth a portion of your final grade given in the overall breakdown. We’ll calculate your participation grade on a per-class basis and then average these grades across the whole term to obtain your final grade. Before averaging, we’ll drop the 3 classes in which you have the lowest grades.

Tip

The intention of this policy is that you can miss up to 3 classes this term without any grade penalty. Please use this flexibility to avoid coming to class if you feel sick! You are also welcome to use it to manage other constraints that may arise in your personal life, deadlines from other courses, etc.

Calculating your Per-Class Participation Grade Your grade will depend on the number of times you raised your hand. To get a grade of 70%, you will need to raise your hands a (small) fixed number of times. We’ll award higher grades by comparing your degree of participation to that of other students in the class. Specifically, we’ll award you the largest number of points in the table below for which you meet the criterion:

Participate at least this many times

Earned Grade

0

0

1

50%

2

60%

3

65%

4

70%

N

80%

M

100%

Attention

N represents the median among students who participated at least once. M represents the maximum among students who participated at least once.

If your number of points is more than 4 but less than the median, we’ll linearly interpolate accordingly; likewise if your number of points is more than the median but less than the maximum. The median student will get a grade of 80% for participation (even if the median is 4 or less) and hence, half the class will get a grade above 80%.

Tip

Here is a practical example:

Imagine in a particular class, the median number of times a student spoke was 8 (of the students who participated), and the maximum was 15.

  • A student who raised their hand 6 times would receive 7.5 points, with the following formula: 7 + (6-4)/(8-4).

  • Another student who raised their hand 11 times would receive 8.86 points, with the following formula: 8 + 2*(11-8)/(15-8).