By Estefania Torres |Asst. A&E Editor|
Class participation is essential for anyone to have a successful education.
Sometimes professors make participation up to 30 percent of the total class grade, leaving the student no choice but to fulfill this class requirement.
Participation is often considered to be a student’s attendance, contribution and involvement in class discussion.
The importance for student involvement in a class discussion is so they can be more interactive with the content that they are learning.
Being able to understand and talk about a topic is an indication that the student is knowledgeable about the information that they are learning.
Most professors make it clear at the beginning of any course that participation is key in order to pass. These points are easy credit among other things like writing papers, taking quizzes, and the dreadful midterms and finals that are often required in every course.
It is really not a big deal to attend class and exchange ideas with the teachers and other students.
Being involved is more entertaining—it makes the class session go by faster and learning becomes more enjoyable. Constant communication between a teacher and a student is the key factor to success.
“Knowledge is distributed across a network of connections to people and information-learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks,” according to Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning.
One of the greatest struggles that students face is the overwhelming feeling of speaking in front of their peers and failing. Saying something wrong is usually what keeps students from participating in their class rooms.
On the contrary, there is no such thing as failing; the only way to fail is to not do it at all.
“I didn’t want to participate at first, it was very intimidating. Once I started to talk and interact with the instructor about the material I was able to fully understand what we were learning and I even did good on the exams.
Even when I answered a question wrong I was still learning,” said student Cynthia Rojas.
Almost all of the courses that I have taken on this campus require constant participation, especially in the Communication Department. As a Comm major, I have been in courses that require constant class interaction.
Participation has helped me and many students that I know understand and master the material that is presented.
Social presence, cognitive presence and a teaching presence is the perfect formula for the best education, according to a group of researchers who did a study on creating educational experiences at the Community of Inquiry.
When teacher and students corroborate together correctly, it establishes the relationship, giving growth to both parties and allows for higher learning.
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