By Rhea Choudhary | Staff Writer
There is a certain type of student who immediately excels, taking initiative the moment a professor says, “Let’s open this up for discussion.” They quickly raise their hand, confidently speak and know how to fill any silence.
Then, there are the rest of us in the class, the ones still processing and forming thoughts, or simply being the ones who don’t feel the need to say something to prove to the professors we are engaged.
However, in many classrooms, those differences don’t just craft the class conversation but determine your grade.
Participation grades are often a way for professors to encourage engagement, especially within smaller, discussion-based classes. In theory, they serve as rewards for students who effectively contribute to the learning environment. In reality, they often end up being a reward for something entirely different: one’s extroversion.
This is not just a personal observation, but is one supported by research. A 2015 study by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment found that students engage in multiple ways, through listening, reflecting and writing, not just speaking. However, classroom assessment practices still often tend to prioritize visible, verbal participation over these less obvious forms of engagement.
When participation has such a specific definition, learning that happens internally becomes invisible. Invisible learning doesn’t receive a reward.
Introverted students, or simply more reflective learners, are not less engaged in the content. They are engaged differently. According to the American Psychological Association, introversion is associated with inward processing and careful thinking rather than disengagement. In classrooms where speed and frequency of responses are emphasized, those strengths can become disadvantages.
Participation grades don’t usually account for thinking time. Instead, they reward whoever speaks first or whoever happens to speak the most, not necessarily who is contributing the most thoughtfully or effectively. That pressure can push students to talk just to be seen participating, rather than actually adding something of real value.
Beyond personality, this structure creates inequities. Reporting from The Chronicle of Higher Education shows anxious students may avoid participating verbally. When speaking becomes the primary measure of participation, students can be graded on their comfort level rather than their comprehension.
The result is an environment where grades reflect a student’s comfort levels and extroversion, not comprehension.
Now I am not saying this means that participation should not matter. Discussion is valuable; it encourages students to consider new ideas, exposes them to unique perspectives and makes learning more dynamic.
However, if the professor’s goal is for a student to be genuinely engaged in their content, we need to rethink what “participation” should actually look like. Currently, participating in a class has a too narrow definition that comes from merely speaking just to speak.
Engagement does not have to mean raising your hand first or speaking the most in a discussion. It can come from actively listening, adding in your own thoughts on someone else’s idea or writing a thoughtful reflection after a professor’s lecture. Some of the most valuable participation occurs quietly, and that is often unrecognized.
Now there are already a few classrooms following this method. Some professors allow students to submit written responses rather than speaking every day. Others require small-group discussions, in the hope that students may feel more comfortable contributing to the topic. These changes in approaches don’t take away participation. In turn, they expand it.
The goal is not to pause discussion or to stop students who do enjoy speaking in class. It is to stop treating one way of engaging as the only valid one and the one that reflects a student’s standing in their class.
When participation grades reward extroversion, they prove that how you learn matters less than how you perform, which should not be the case.
College classrooms should challenge students to think, not just to speak. And until participation grades show that, they are not really measuring engagement at all. Instead, they are measuring personality.
