Autonomy Vs. Assessment: To What Extent The Audience Approval In A Gallery Game Helps Bring Pleasure, Pressure, And Progress

This paper is intended to inspire a competitive incentive in classroom participants. In a class where the number of students is big and a flipped way is worth consideration, it is often presumed needful for participatory pedagogy. I would like to share a classroom experience according to my observation during the semester and a semester-end survey filled out. Intended to drill college students in English abilities through studying special topics on modern China, my class was characterized by the gallery game where the students were requested to display their learning results with sticky notes and wallpapers, on which all participants, including the teacher, used stickers to show their approval. Although the process appeared insufficient for student assessment, it was found useful to motivate learners. There were 88 students signing up for the class, where 86 of them were regular attendees. More than 10 students had come from abroad, whose mother tongues were non-Chinese languages, so the only language used in class was English. The 25 survey questions are raised to inquire whether and to what extent the learner autonomy was increased. The findings are that the students’ attendance rate was high, the students were gradually used to either self-learning or teamwork learning, and they became a little more proactive than before when having to make their works creatively interesting enough to win as many sticker points as possible. In doing so, my students were metaphorically baptized market probationers who voluntarily confronted the hustle and bustle with each other’s help.