Why Are Students Not participating in Class

Student’s do not participate in class

In today’s classroom it is evident to both students and teachers that students falter at participating in class, if they do at all. This can be catastrophic for learning in most cases because the student could not be paying attention and passing it off. This needs to be looked into and studied. Finding the source of the barrier to participation is crucial if we want to help students succeed. The research that lies here is pertinent to said subject for it delves into this question in hopes of helping a larger research. What drove me to find an answer was what I experience in my classes. Many times a teacher would ask for a class opinion, and after a minuet of waiting for someone to answer the teacher would give up and continue. This happened over and over, and I could not find an explanation.

Previous Findings

Reasons for lack of participation
I am not the first to delve into this subject. Previous researchers have found some reasons of why this could happen. Some researchers conclude that student’s believe they’re not expected to participate in class. Other research has also concluded that students don’t feel they have to participate in the conversation because they aren’t involved in the conversation. Some students are just shy and this affects their participation. Other students are just plain scared of being wrong. So what can we do about this?

What Has Been Tried

The teaching center in Washington university says that “On the first day of class, explain what you see as valuable about class participation”. This would dispel the student’s believe they’re not expected to participate, and establish early on a sense of need to participate. They also say that “Students will be more engaged if they believe that you perceive them as individuals, rather than as anonymous members of a group. Encourage students to learn one another’s names, as well; this strategy will increase the possibility that they will address one another by name and direct their comments to one another, not just you.” Finally, Successfully engaging a student to participate help them flow into the conversation, and helps ease those shy students in too. Margie from Bright Hub suggests to always find something right with a student’s answer, but this does not mean you should accept an incorrect answer, just rephrase it so the student doesn’t feel bad and continues to participate. Amanda McAndrew also comments that “may find that student responses are more thoughtful when they have been given more time to process information and form clear ideas” These are good strategies, but how are the students themselves acting in class from their perspective? These all work from the teachers point of view, not the students.

Survey

I decided to use a survey for this investigation because the sheer number of student data needed would have rendered interviews too long and tedious, causing my given time frame to not be enough. The content of my survey was to establish to who it was directed to, get a glimpse into their mindset, and single out their own reason of why they didn’t participate or pay attention in class.

An error I committed in my survey was not allowing more room for self-expression. I had some open ended questions, but most of them were limited to simple answers, and did not get elaborate answers which I hoped for. Perhaps I should have rephrased several of my multiple selection answers as well, as I tried to create a comical atmosphere to lull the student into a sense of comradeness in hopes of true answers, I got the opposite. I saw evidence of erased answers just to choose the comical one, even when the two answers were polar opposites. Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve completely true answers, since the tested were influencing their answers to what they thought were the right answers, and not what they actually did. A few questions to throw them off their tracks would have helped.

The survey

After having handed out 50 surveys, I received 45 in return. This is sufficient to catch a glimpse and support most of my findings. This survey was constructed in 3 sections, knowing the target, level of participation, and finding the cause of distractions. There were filler questions to set the subject in the mood of responsiveness.
Knowing the Target

There were 5 questions in this section; age, gender, class, and credit hours +class time. My data shows that the majority of my subjects were between 18 and 19, with a 2 younger and 2 in the 30’s. There were 28 males and 17 females. Only 5 were sophomores, while everyone else was a freshman as expected in an introductory course. Also as expected, most students had 12 credit hours, very few had more.

This helps establish the subjects I am testing, these are introductory college students who are just starting college and are new to the system, with very few older subjects. This concords perfectly with what I assumed.
Level of participation

I used this to establish the student’s mindset into how they study. I asked how they would rate themselves in participation and attention in class. Only 3 gave themselves bad scores, while the rest at least paid attention.

This doesn’t go well with my research, because the opposite is usually true, where only few students participate while the rest lollygag. I expected such though, because people will raise themselves for moral boosters.
Cause of distractions.

I left this are open ended to I could get specific responses to my objective. Responses ranged texting, boredom, daydreaming, and electronic devices like laptops. When asked what would help captivate their attention, among the serious answers people responded such things as music, multimedia presentations, and hands on material. Among more unserious answers, from what I consider to be because they were distracted, unraveling their previous answers, where things such as “huh”, “a chicken running around” and variants.
This concord with some of my findings, things that would captivate their attention is need. I expected more personally from open ended questions; unfortunately some students did not take the survey seriously.

Graph

These are the raw numbers from my survey, questions that were open ended are not shown here.

Age	16	17	18	19	20	27	38
#	2	1	26	15	1	1	1

Gender	male	female
#	23	24

grade LVL	Freshman	Sophmore
#	42	5

# of credit hours	male	female
#	23	24

Attention span	a	b	c	d
#	21	24	1	1

Attention span	a	b	c
#	1	42	4

In conclusion

Based on the findings of my research, I have concluded that research so far has been on the nose and assertive of what is going on in the minds of the students. Newer college students are easily distracted, and have to be motivated to participate, and stripped of distractions.
These results help fortify what is already there, and delve deeper into the mindset of the student to see what causes these distractions. The student has to be challenged into continue in the course, they feel as if it’s too easy, slack of, and fall behind. This information can be used to further the study of how to captivate students and help them participate in class.


Margie. "Improve Class Discussions." Bright Hub. N.p., 15 Sept. 2009. Web. 27
Nov. 2009. 49007.aspx>.

McAndrew, Amanda. "Students not participating in class? Try discussions in
CULearn." ASSETT. N.p., 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Nov. 2009.
.

The Teaching Center. "Increasing Student Participation." The Teaching Center.
N.p., 2099. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. increasing-student-participation>.