Paven Basuita (Assistant Professor in Law) leads the University of Sussex’s Family Law Clinic. In a former life, she worked as a family law solicitor. These days, Paven’s passions lie in teaching and supporting students to achieve their goals. Her scholarship interests include clinical legal education, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, employability, mental health, community and belonging and equality/inequality in law schools and the legal profession.

In 2023 I did something completely new to me – I graded my students on their participation, rather than just their written assignments. This was a new assessment, introduced on the Clinical Legal Education module at Sussex Law School. I found the experience challenging, both in terms of grading and in terms of whether assessing participation is a good idea.

This led me to delve deeper into the topic and this blog is the result of lots of reading, reflecting and speaking to colleagues and students. In this blog I summarise some of the benefits and challenges of assessing participation, together with some recommendations for introducing this type of assessment.

What is meant by assessing participation?

There is no agreed definition for this type of assessment. However, from looking at the literature it seems that participation assessments strive to assess:

• Involvement in learning activities e.g. seminar discussions, online forums, group projects.
• Demonstration of certain skills or behaviours e.g. communication skills.
• Effort and process, as opposed to product. For example, submitting a formative assignment, not the grade obtained for it.

There are many ways of assessing participation. For example:

• Students may be graded on their attendance and/or engagement in taught sessions over the module. See Holly et al. (2024) for a review of this approach.
• Students may be required to produce evidence of their participation as part of a portfolio assessment – this is already used at Sussex, for example in Education and in Linguistics (Murphy, 2024).
• Holistic, continuous assessment of students’ participation throughout the module – this is especially relevant for practical/vocational contexts. Van der Vlueten (2005) has written extensively about this in the context of medical education.

What we do in Clinical Legal Education (CLE)

In CLE, final year undergraduate law students undertake real legal work at the Sussex Law Clinics while also engaging in academic literature and critical reflection.

The participation assessment was introduced to recognise and reward student engagement and commitment to their clinical work. Previously, students had been assessed purely on their written reflections on their work in the clinic, not on their practical work. It was felt that this was unfair to students and did not fully capture their learning. Student feedback also indicated that they felt the written assessments alone did not adequately capture their experience. We were told that they felt frustrated when people who had done very little in the clinics scored highly because they had written good reflective portfolios.

The approach taken to assessing participation in CLE is a holistic one. Students are assessed over the course of two terms and graded out of ten across eight different categories. These categories include engagement and preparation (in seminars and casework), organisation and time management, professionalism, communication, responsiveness to feedback etc. The participation grade makes up 20% of their grade for the module.

Why might you want to introduce a participation assessment?

In my view, a participation assessment has the following potential benefits:

• Holistic – it allows for a more rounded assessment of student learning.
• Continuous – participation assessments typically allow for assessment over time. 
• Inclusive  – assessing participation reduces the reliance on high-stakes, traditional assessment modes, such as end-point written work, which may disadvantage some learners.
• Assessment for learning – this type of assessment encourages students to engage in behaviours which are likely to have a positive impact on their learning (and that of others) e.g. attending classes, completing formative assessments etc.
• Authentic – it is realistic, cognitively challenging and incorporates evaluative judgment (Villaroel et al, 2017).
• Motivational – it encourages and rewards engagement and commitment to the work. In CLE, students and staff have reported that it helps to create a more positive and accountable learning environment.
• Human – it is less vulnerable to generative AI than other types of assessment.

What are the challenges?

Assessing participation does raise some concerns. Some of these will arise with any assessment, but some are particularly relevant to participation assessments. For example:

• Fairness (including bias) and inclusivity. This is a particular concern if the grade is determined by one tutor based on their overall impression of a student over time. How do you avoid your personal feelings about the student affecting the grade? How do you remember everything the student did?
• Burden on markers. If the participation assessment is very broad it can put a high burden on markers to make judgments about students and to keep track of everything students have done/not done. This could make it hard to scale up with larger cohorts.
• Transparency and accountability. As with any assessment, students may not understand how their mark was arrived at, what is required to achieve top marks or how they are doing during the year. A participation assessment can be difficult to second mark or to defend in the event of an appeal, especially if there is no record of how the mark was arrived at.
• Impact on learning. It could be argued that constant assessment undermines learning because students may be less willing to experiment and make mistakes. Another downside of a continuous assessment is that students don’t have a chance to acquire skills before being graded on them (Schrag, 1996).

Recommendations

I think that the above challenges can be overcome with careful assessment design and implementation. Here are a few suggestions:

• Think carefully about what you choose to assess and ensure you can assess it fairly. For example, teamwork may be difficult to assess fairly if the work takes place largely outside the tutor’s view. One way round this could be requiring students to critically reflect on their contribution to the group and assessing their reflection as a proxy for their participation. Self-diagnostic tools such as the Wheel of Trust might assist with this. This reflection can be done part way through the module to allow feedforward.
• Give students agency in evidencing their participation. This promotes inclusive assessment, transparency and accountability. An excellent example of this is the approach taken by Professor Lynne Murphy where she provides students with a choice of participation activities and they evidence their engagement using a participation record. This creates a clear paper trail of what evidence is being considered and is inclusive because it allows students to engage in different ways.
• Draw on a range of sources/viewpoints. Avoid relying on the judgment of one person but seek a range of evidence. For example, in CLE we use feedback from other supervisors and ‘objective’ data like attendance records and data from our case management system (you could use data from your Virtual Learning Environment).
• Ensure you have a paper trail/record, in case the grade is challenged.
• Keep the marking simple and avoid grading at granular levels. MacArthur (2018) argues convincingly against finely grained marking systems, as such accuracy and differentiation is neither achievable nor desirable. Instead, you could consider pass/fail or a marking rubric with a few broad categories e.g. fail, satisfactory, good, excellent. This should ease the burden on markers too. If you wish to assess classroom participation consider  transparent and co-created marking rubrics.
• Don’t try and assess everything the student does. This can be overwhelming for students and markers. You might consider only assessing students on one project or over a defined time period.
• Provide regular and dialogic feedback. Tell students if their participation is not up to scratch so they have a chance to address it! In CLE we do this by requiring students to complete a formative self-assessment where they review their own participation and then receive tutor feedback. We also share feedback with them that they have received from external sources, like supervisors, and discuss any problems as they arise.
• Be transparent with students about how marks are arrived at and what will/won’t be taken into account. In conclusion, there are lots of different ways to assess participation and it is likely that there is a way of doing it which will work for your context. If you have a go, please share your experience on the Learning Matters Forum!

Acknowledgements

Thank you to colleagues across the University who peer reviewed this assessment and generously shared their time, suggestions and resources with me. These include Sarah Watson, Lynne Murphy, James Williams, Lucy Welsh and Lisa Peck.

References and further reading

Armstrong, M. and Boud, D. (1983) ‘Assessing participation in discussion: An exploration of the issues’, Studies in higher education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 8(1), pp. 33–44. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075078312331379101.

Bloxham, S. and Boyd, P. (2007) Developing effective assessment in higher education : a practical guide. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Boud, D. (2000) ‘Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society’, Studies in continuing education, 22(2), pp. 151–167. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/713695728.

Flint, N. and Johnson, B. (2011) Towards fairer university assessment : recognizing the concerns of students. First edition. London ; Routledge.

Holly, C. et al. (2024) ‘Grading participation in the classroom: The assumptions, challenges, and alternatives’, Teaching and learning in nursing, 19(1), pp. 27–33. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2023.06.020.

Lai, K. (2012) ‘Assessing participation skills: online discussions with peers’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 37(8), pp. 933–947. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2011.590878.

McArthur, J. (2016) ‘Assessment for social justice: the role of assessment in achieving social justice’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 41(7), pp. 967–981. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1053429.

McArthur, J. (2018) Assessment for Social Justice : Perspectives and Practices Within Higher Education. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Murphy, L. (2024) ‘Encouraging Attendance and Engagement Through Portfolio Assessment’, Sussex Learning Matters Blog, 10 April 2024.

Nicolson, D., Newman, J., and Grimes, R. (2023). How to Set up and Run a Law Clinic, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Nicolson, D. (2016) ‘Problematizing Competence in Clinical Legal Education: What do we mean by competence and how do we assess non-skill competencies?’, International journal of clinical legal education, 23(1), pp. 66-. Available at: https://doi.org/10.19164/ijcle.v23i1.491.

Pham, T. (2022) ‘Assessing Employability Skills How are current assessment practices “fair” for international students?, in Ajjawi, R. et al. (eds) Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education Routledge, London, UK: Routledge.

Schrag, P. (1996) ‘Constructing a Clinic’, 3 Clinical Law Review 175

Tai, J. et al. (2023) ‘Assessment for inclusion: rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design’, Higher education research and development, 42(2), pp. 483–497. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2022.2057451.

University of New South Wales, ‘Grading Class Participation’.

Van Der Vleuten, C.P.M. and Schuwirth, L.W.T. (2005) ‘Assessing professional competence: from methods to programmes’, Medical education, 39(3), pp. 309–317. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2929.2005.02094.x.

Villarroel, V. et al. (2018) ‘Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 43(5), pp. 840–854. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396 .