Interestingly, this same topic came up at a workshop I attended
last week. The presenter put forth this as one teacher's
solution. She said the teacher found that assigning reading
assignments for homework and holding discussions in class was not
working at all. The students' lives outside of class simply did
not accommodate completing that sort of homework (for whatever
reasons), so discussions usually fell flat. This innovative
teacher then reversed the procedure. She allowed time within the
class to complete the necessary reading assignments, monitoring
as they went along. She found that most of her high schools
students became very active on the internet during the late
evening hours. By setting up an opportunity for her students to
join her in a chatroom situation, discussion of the pertinent
topics emerged and flourished. often beyond the constraints of
time allowed during the classroom period. True, they spoke in
netspeak, but the ideas and participation were there. Credit was
given for participation, in whatever form it took, and enthusiasm
for the material (high school literature, I believe) was
generated.

I know that this doesn't address the fact that they were not
writing essays at this point, but I thought I'd offer this as one
teacher's solution to the participation aspect. I do think we
need to be aware of what is going on in our students' lives and
use what we can get from them, even if it means we have to
redirect or adapt some of our ideas on education

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