Factors affecting classroom participation and how participation leads to a better learning

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we analyze various course- and student-related factors that affect participation grades within several college accounting classes. The second purpose is to determine whether in-class participation grades have an effect on exam performance in these classes. We find that, unlike in liberal arts and sciences courses, in accounting courses, participation grades for female students do not differ from participation grades for their male counterparts, regardless of class level. Overall, course level and student major have no direct effect on participation grades; however, the accounting majors and students in the lower level courses have better attendance than do non-accounting majors and students in more advanced courses. We observe that class schedule, in particular class duration and semester, affects students’ participation performance. Lastly, we find that students who participate more in classroom discussions perform 25% better on exams than do those with lower participation grades. This relationship holds for the three elements of participation grading: frequency of participation, consistency of participation, and attendance.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom participation
• participation grading
• active learning
• achievement of college students
• effect of participation grades on exam results
• factors affecting participation grades

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Elena Precourt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3704-1274

Notes

1. The level of students’ willingness to participate during class directly relates to their level of interest in the subject (Berdine, 1986; Wade, 1994; Green, 2008). In classes consisting of mixed majors (i.e., principals of accounting is required for marketing, management, international business, finance, and other non-accounting and often non-business majors) level of interest varies greatly. Hence, the biggest challenge the instructor faces is relating and demonstrating importance of the subject matter to different backgrounds and experiences.

2. Participation grade weight is 10 percent of the final course grade in any given class.

3. At the end of the class, students self-report the number of times they meaningfully interject into the class discussions. Instructors verify accuracy of the reporting immediately following the class. We acknowledge that verification process becomes cumbersome in large-size classes. Please, refer to Gainor and Precourt (2017) for detailed description of the QP method used to evaluate students’ participation performance.

4. Course schedule includes duration (Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes are 50 minute classes; Tuesday/Thursday classes are 75 minute classes, and night classes are 150 minute classes), semester, and academic year the classes are held.

5. For example, in a typical night class, a student could receive a perfect consistency grade by participating once for each of the 14 weekly classes. This would compare to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class where a student would have to participate once for each of the 42 classes.

6. Category Others consists of majors that had 10 or fewer observations.

7. Most of these variables are widely used in the existing literature on classroom participation and its effects on the exam grades.

8. This conclusion is also supported by the results documented in Table 5, Models 1, 2 and 3, where we find significantly positive relationships between exam grades and variable Semester, indicating that the grades are higher in the Spring than in the Fall.

9. In addition, we analyze whether or not participation performance in interaction with student-related variables affect exam performance. We find that only student major in combination with participation level (interaction variable Acct Major*Particip) directly relates to exam grades, which means that accounting majors with better in-class participation earn exam grades that are 6.4% higher than those earned by non-accounting majors (p = 0.0892). The results of the analysis are not included in the paper and are available upon request from the authors.