Class participation (oral) refers to any verbal contributions made by students during the EL3880B seminars. These inputs are usually voluntary, but students may be asked more formally to contribute to the discussion.
If you see a slide with the following background design, then you are invited to give comments on a particular idea or issue discussed in the class:
Occasionally, students may be asked to engage in discussion with fellow students before making their contribution.
Of course, it does not mean that you can only contribute if you see a slide with the above design. I encourage appropriate comments which do not disrupt the flow of my seminars. Not every comment will qualify you to get a good mark for class participation. In this regard, it must be borne in mind that quality is more important than quantity. There will also be opportunities to engage in class participation at appropriate points of the project presentations.
The following are some of the criteria used to judge your class contributions. The list is not exhaustive. Take note that not all the criteria are used all the time. One or more of them may be used for the particular contribution that you have made
The following are discouraged:
Oral class participation will comprise 5% of the total marks for this module. It of course represents the more open-ended means of testing, as a contrast to the quiz and survey questions, with their closed sets of answers. As such, it may represent cognitive skills that are of a higher order than those required for the survey and quiz questions. However, one difficulty of giving more marks to this assessment is that not many students can contribute on a regular basis, and the nature of their contributions is also inherently variable.
Last revised: 27 December 2010.