Self-Serving Statement

The Self-Serving Statement

Rather than continuously take attendance and measure class participation through time consuming, inaccurate, and often unjustifiable methods, this course requires each student to make a case for their own participation credit. In many cases, it may be difficult for participation to be reconstructed later, and assumptions made by instructors will always be a guess.

To receive participation credit, you need to turn in a self-serving statement at or before the last day of class. This statement should be a one-page summary of your participation in the class, as well as a comment on other students in the class, starting with a letter or percent grade, then focusing on both parts of the class, project and participation, in each of three aspects: attendance, effort and contribution. You may want to compare your work both to other members of the class, or to other courses you have taken.

For the project, the three aspects are straightforward. Did you go to meetings? Did you put in as much work as everyone else? Did you get as much done as everyone else? If you kept a lab, that could help.

For class, the aspects are trickier. How often did you miss class? When you did, was it for good reason? When you were there, did you stay awake? Did you ever add to the discussion? Would other students in the class miss you if you weren't there? Why? Did you do anything positive that merited notice by the professor or your classmates? Did you spend a long time talking to other students about the course? Did you come to office hours very much? Did you work on homework with other students? Did you help them learn the material better? Did you do anything particularly difficult or imaginative in the course? Your failures are as important as your successes.

I also ask you to discuss other students in the class, but only in a positive light (If you have something negative to say about someone else in the class, see me in private). Many of your peers will fall into a category of "oblivious," meaning that you were unaware of those people being in the room while you took this course, or you found them generally pleasant. Other students may have truly added to your benefit from the course, and you might think that I already noticed their participation. Remind me. These students may have said interesting things in class, worked hard in your homework or project group, or just been a person that you were glad to have around you in the class.

In evaluating your participation, I will use the following steps.

I will read everyone's SSS, and mark down a rating their own numbers for themselves, and comments on others.
I will adjust everyone's numbers based on others' comments and my own notes and thoughts.
- Assume that I do not have very good notes, so any details you give will be very helpful.
- Plus, I have no clue what happens outside of class time.
I will distribute participation points in a way I think is fair, given the rankings and ratings.

I am not going to be more specific than that, but you can assume that a person who comes to class most all of the time, works acceptably on their homework (3 hrs/week) and group work (20 hrs over the semester), but doesn't really stand out, should receive a score of about 80% for their participation grade.