Making Class Participation a Reality

The classroom is core to the educational process. It is here that university community begins and teachers ". .. create the common ground of intellectual commitment (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 1990, 12). Uninspiring classrooms where students are rarely motivated and where instructors, sometimes out of despair, do little more than mechanically cover the material need to be brought to life. The classroom experience is too important to be surrendered to despair and uninspired teaching. Class participation, by bringing students actively into the educational process, provides one means for enhancing our teaching and bringing life to the classroom. A recent report on the state of higher education, while recognizing the important role played by lectures, stresses the need for a variety of teaching styles. Seeing the passive student as "one of the greatest challenges facing higher education," it recommends the increased use of active modes of teaching that require students to take greater responsibility for their learning. Among the modes recommended are small group discussions, simulations, in-class presentations, and debates (Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education 1984, 27). Chickering, Gamson, and Barsi are even more emphatic in asserting that: