Easy Class Participation Tracking, Grading, Rubric Generation, and More with Excel

byJon Westfall January 24, 2020 Psychology Teaching Tips Technology

One of my classes this semester requires me to track how often students speak in class, and evaluate each comment. I also have students leading discussion, and I need to be able to generate completed rubrics easily for them so they get my feedback.

I’ve found that I can keep track of all of this in an Excel Spreadsheet on my iPad Pro, and that I can also use Excel to generate individual rubrics and a class wide participation report.

Here’s an example workbook that you can download and modify, and some screenshots that explain how it works.

The Participation Tracker screen – as students participate, I type in their names in the Person column (Excel remembers names after awhile, so I only have to type the first few letters), and I make their rating in the Score column. I can also put any comments in that I might need later.
A pivot table that summarizes the participations in class, gives me the average score and standard deviation.
When a student is presenting, I make my rubric ratings in this spreadsheet page. I can make comments after each rating area, and also know which presentations are coming up next or refer back. I also have a last column that’s “private” to me – it doesn’t show up on the rubric, but is a great place to make notes about something a student said that I might want to put on a quiz or exam.
The Rubric Report sheet – I simply change the number in the upper right to the row number I’d like to create a report for, and it populates the information into the Rubric. I can then take a screenshot of the rubric, and upload it to my LMS (Canvas) as a comment.

Hopefully you find the spreadsheet useful – I know I have in just the 2 weeks I’ve been using it. It’s saved me a lot of administrative work, enabling me to do more “fun” pedagogical stuff in class!

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