We all know faculty who do; often we do so ourselves. But overall, how many faculty grade participation? Would you guess a majority? What reasons justify our decisions to grade or not to grade participation? Those questions help get at our assumptions about participation, and then we can use survey research data like that collected by Susan Rogers to see how our beliefs relate to the facts. Specifically Rogers wanted to find out: (1) what percentage of instructors explicitly mention participation on the course syllabus, (2) what percentage of instructors explicitly grade participation, (3) what are the characteristics of courses in which participation is graded, and (4) what underlying attitudes instructors have about grading participation. (p. 12)
