From February 10-12, attendees gathered in Baltimore, Maryland for the 16th Teaching and Learning Conference. The program committee organized a dynamic conference around the theme “Re-Energizing Political Science: Innovations and New Opportunities.” Pre-conference short courses explored questions related to civic engagement and student connection. Jyl J. Josephson of Rutgers University, Newark, opened the conference with keynote address, titled “Teaching Politics for Democracy’s Future.” Program co-chair, Rebecca Glazier (University of Arkansas at Little Rock), presented two prestigious teaching awards: the APSA Award for Teaching Innovation and the Michael Brintnall Teaching and Learning Award to winner Andrea Alemán of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Throughout the conference, attendees engaged in one of six themed tracks and had the opportunity to select from a variety of interactive workshops. Summaries of the six tracks are published in the following pages. These summaries include highlights and themes that emerged from the research presented in each track. The summary authors also issued recommendations for faculty, departments, and the discipline as a whole—providing suggestions for new strategies, resources, and approaches aimed at advancing political science education throughout the discipline and beyond.
APSA thanks the program committee and track moderators for all of their hard work in making this year’s Teaching and Learning Conference a success. Since 2018, the standalone TLC conference is a biennial conference and a central part of APSA’s commitment to teaching and learning. The sixth annual TLC at APSA mini-conference will take place on Saturday, September 2 in Los Angeles as part of the 2023 APSA Annual Meeting.
The presentations discussed below are available on APSA Preprints.
CHRISTOPHER R. HALLENBROOK, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, DOMINGUEZ HILLS
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Astaple of APSA Teaching and Learning Conferences, the civic engagement track brought together projects on how political science educators can develop student’s skills and motivation to engage in politics and their community. The first panel engaged questions regarding political controversies over the appropriate scope of civic engagement and neutral skills building versus political indoctrination. After Laura U. Schneider and Melissa J. Buehler traced the political history of these debates, the rest of the panel presented projects answering how to keep civic engagement beneficial to all. Projects to cultivate student passion included how to develop “emotional competency” in students to combat apathy (Jennie Sweet-Cushman and Lanethea Mathews-Schultz) and having them engage students at universities abroad through Zoom and debate political issues in a comparative context (Sarah Surak, Angeline Prichard, and Maria Batista). The most ambitious, and unfortunately most difficult, project to replicate, project was from the DePaul Civics Institute presented by Ben Epstein and Molly Andolina. The Institute has trained faculty from disciplines across the university to teach a new course “Lived Civics, the Social Contract, and Public Life,” which shows great potential in making civics and civic life relatable and accessible to students.
The second session examined specific classroom interventions and the empirical research presenters had done to gauge the effectiveness of the interventions on their students. Jessy Defenderfer showed how listening to even high-quality news podcasts can increase student disgust with politics and decrease student interest in political scientists—a concerning finding for the profession. Christopher R. Hallenbrook and Salvatore J. Russo demonstrated that small civic engagement assignments such as writing a letter to one’s member of Congress or signing a petition in an Introduction to US Government class do increase students self-reported political efficacy even more than simply taking the class does. This generated significant discussion as California State University, Dominguez Hills is a Hispanic Serving Institution, and previous research has found a gap in the effect of such interventions on white and BIPOC students. The most provocative presentation of the second session was Harry Blain’s examination of self-censorship by conservative students. He documented the evidence that conservative students do self-censor on campus and in class discussions, and argued that, in addition to having a corrosive effect on class discussions, their self-censorship hurts progressive students by depriving them of rigorous debate and alternative viewpoints. This presentation served as a springboard for a wide-ranging discussion on freedom of speech, the marketplace of ideas, hate speech, and other harms. Two essential themes across all these projects were how to get students to recognize the civic engagement skills they acquire and how to ensure we develop civic engagement skills for all groups of students (e.g. race, ethnicity, income, ideology, partisanship).
The third panel engaged the new tools technology provide for developing classroom skills, including the effect of civic engagement assignments in large online courses. Andrea Alemán and Jon R. Taylor found that including civic engagement in the design of large, asynchronous online Introduction to US Government classes both improved student success and decreased DFW (Drop, Fail, or withdrawal) rates. The latter is an especially important finding given there can often being higher levels of withdrawals and low grades in these sorts of asynchronous classes. Karen M. McCurdy and Jacek Lubecki presented their experience with Kritik, an app designed to engage students in short writing assignments with peer feedback to incorporate more writing into larger classes of 45 to 65 students. They found that students, having subscribed to the service for $26 for the semester, write more and complain about it less when they 1) do it online and 2) do it for their (anonymous) peers. They seem to still care about their peers’ views of them even when they don’t know which of their peers read their essay and their peers don’t know whose essay they’ve read, which indicates the great value of peer review of essays and other student writing. Anne Gillman engaged the deep skepticism students have in the age of fake news and deep fakes. Today’s students are deeply aware of the ways in which digital and even visual content can be manipulated. They are therefore deeply skeptical, even of reliable, unaltered content. Track participants then had a deep discussion of the difficulties involved in persuading our students that anything is real. Meeting this challenge will be essential to the civic life of American in the decades to come.
The track’s final session focused on projects that aimed to engage students in teaching their community in some structured way. These were uniformly inspiring projects. Michael T. Rogers took students into local elementary and middle schools to teach students on Constitution Day. Based on surveys, both college students and the students they taught found these to be deeply meaningful, small group interactions that left all parties far more knowledgeable about the Constitution than they were before. The event also generated significant positive local news coverage. Presenters from Virginia Commonwealth University (Alexandra Reckendorf, Deirdre Condit, Hollie Wilburn, and Maddie Quigley) presented findings of their interviews of VCU students asking students who did experiential learning in New Hampshire primaries in 2016 and 2020, as well as alumni from more traditional classes, about their experiences to measure medium to long term effects. Students who traveled to New Hampshire reported fond memories and personal growth, as well as more lasting efficacy and greater donations to VCU (which had paid for the trip) than those who did not. Steven Charles Lawrence presented a project where his students took a for credit class in which they prepared and delivered a lecture on a topic of local importance to the broader community around this rural school. Students, many of whom were first-generation college students, worked with community mentors such as judges and other officials, to develop their lecture that was heavily advertised by the university. This project connects the wider community to campus, in many cases for the first time, and both community members and mentors reported being highly impressed by the students’ knowledge and skills. Such projects seem especially idyllic on rural campuses, but could be replicated anywhere, including urban campuses, to great effect.
Overall, the track brought together dozens of scholar-educators over two days, engaging many important themes of civic education. The projects and discussions showcased the diversity of civic education and the many potential projects available for inspiring our students.
SHANNON MCQUEEN, WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
LIZA TAYLOR, CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY POMONA
THE INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM: DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND ANTI-RACISM
This year, the Inclusive Classroom Track focused on anti-racist and intersectional pedagogy and practices to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the political science classroom. Across four panels and fifteen papers, panelists discussed how to create more diverse teaching and research spaces, student reflections on their experiences, the place for empathy in cultivating these spaces, and the importance of partnering with students in such endeavors.
Our first panel, “Student Reflections and Experiences,” underscored the importance of identity when considering diverse student experiences in the classroom. Using data from over 1000 students in introductory American Politics courses, Tavishi Bhasin and Charity Butcher explored how course format impacts minority students. Their findings noted the diverse experience of students in online classes. Most students perceived face-to-face courses as most effective at providing a strong sense of community, expressing thoughts, and providing opportunities to hear from students from various backgrounds. However, there were variations for women and students with disabilities in their course experience. Similarly, Shannon McQueen’s work highlighted the importance of a sense of belonging in online and in-person diversity courses. Using pre- and post-surveys of six sections of a diversity course, she finds little meaningful difference between online and in-person learning outcomes for most students. However, Republican-identifying students seemingly enter diversity courses with a lower understanding of privilege and oppression and learn more in an in-person setting. Christine Nemacheck and Milka Mered demonstrated an innovative solution to recognizing the diversity of student experience during discussions in the classroom through pedagogical partnerships between faculty and students. Their model showcased the possibility of this collaboration in the political science classroom for empowering students and maintaining an understanding of the student experience. Similarly, Jeffrey Carroll explored difficult discussion dynamics by examining the value of written and voice-memo reflection assignments in a “Race and the American Political System” course. In comparing the pros and cons of these assignments, he emphasized the importance of an anonymous and informal reflection space for students when discussing race.
Our second panel, “Evaluating Effectiveness & Building Empathy,” probed the effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Sarah Wilson Sokhey considered how to meet diversity and inclusion goals in an undergraduate research lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder. To diversify the pool of student researchers and research projects in the lab, she suggests widening recruitment of students by giving preference in the lab for those with “work-study” status, streamlining the application process, prioritizing “enthusiasm” over previous experience, and building community through regular social events and lab-specific trainings. Michelle Fletcher and Adam Hoffman’s paper pivots from the research lab to the classroom space, confronting the challenge of incorporating intersectional political science pedagogy into an introductory American public policy class at a predominantly white-serving institution. Fletcher and Hoffman designed a comparative assessment across two sections of the same course–an experimental section (taught by Fletcher, a Black woman) that intentionally integrated intersectional political science pedagogy and a flipped classroom, and a control section (taught by Hoffman, a white man) that intentionally avoided incorporating intersectional content or pedagogy. Results from a post-class survey suggest that students exposed to intersectional pedagogy gain a critical and far soberer understanding of the reality of inequity and injustice in American public policy.
The next two papers explored the challenges of centering empathy in the political science classroom. Colin Brown and Chelsea Kaufman’s work identified the three purposes empathy serves in political science and teaching and learning literature: to enable understanding of others’ political positions, to assist understanding of experiences of people in marginalized groups, to promote equity and inclusion, and to facilitate a democratic society by strengthening one’s ability to listen and deliberate. They foreground the challenge of cultivating empathy in students while avoiding the tendency of developing empathy only for one’s in-group or the pattern of “filtered empathy” wherein one develops an exploitative empathic relationship with marginalized group members. Relatedly, Louai Rahal and Ajay Kumar Garg’s paper offered a practical tool for developing students’ awareness of misinformation and the media’s role in cultivating empathy for specific groups. While reflecting on the disparate treatment of white Ukrainian refugees and the treatment of people of color who were escaping the conflict in Ukraine, students ponder whether empathy can span both in- and out-group connections or whether the tendency toward in-group sympathies reflects empathy’s inherent limitations and biases.
Our third panel, “Justice and Pedagogical Approaches,” offered tools for centering equity and social justice in the political science classroom. Tara Parsons explored centering “justice’’ in an introductory American government course by providing an overview of a justice-oriented American government syllabus. This overview included a comparison of social justice content (i.e., theories of justice, ethics, and human behavior, crime and punishment, and restorative justice) to topics covered in a typical American government class, assignments that encourage students to reconcile the justice-oriented goals with outcomes of public policy decisions, and course readings that deemphasize textbooks in favor of more diverse voices and stories. Stacy Moak’s paper details a semester-long assignment designed to understand the history of racial suppression and segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Her urban politics students partnered with students in a 3-D art class to create digital stories of historically Black communities for a local organization. Discovering that archival research yields no records on these communities, students gain a critical awareness of the politics of knowledge production and historical preservation. To compensate for the lack of records, students interview community members and visit sites to gather the necessary information to create their stories, which are donated to the community association for their use. By blending civic engagement with learning-by-doing, this project demonstrates the potential of taking risks in centering social justice and anti-racism in our classrooms.
Liza Taylor and Cricket Keating also centered the importance of risk-taking in the service of educating for intersectional social justice. Their paper explores how a coalitional consciousness might be cultivated in students and offers two concrete exercises. The Google Map exercise invites students to locate themselves relative to systems of power and resistance within a site that holds significance to them. Students are then asked to “travel” in María Lugones’s (2003) sense of the word to two peers’ worlds on the map and consider who they might be in their world and whether they might “echo” their peers’ resistance. The second exercise is a semester-long coalition simulation, where students position themselves vis-à-vis a social justice issue of their collective choosing. In the guided simulation, students share their positionalities, noting points of convergence and divergence among them, considering how differences might both frustrate and facilitate their collective mission. By keeping an anonymous weekly journal that functions as one of the primary empirical texts of the course, students emerge as co-creators of knowledge. Taylor and Keating find that when students are guided by the literature of US Women of Color feminism, they display a remarkable ability to empathize with their peers and transform in the process.
The final panel, “Inclusive Curriculum and Institutional Change,” extended our discussion into curricula and institutional change. Katharine Javian presented a Universal Design for Learning within an Introduction to American Politics course. Designing a course to accommodate all students, regardless of formal accommodation, can feel intimidating. Javian’s syllabus and description are readily available to help those who want to develop a more inclusive course design. Young-Im Lee and Danielle Joesten Martin investigated grading practices and achievement gaps. They empirically explored how course policies, grading practices, course requirements, individual instructors’ characteristics (e.g., gender, contract type, seniority), the pandemic effect, and course modality (online, in-person, hybrid) correlate with the ’Drop Withdraw Fail’ rate of upper-division political science courses involving nearly 80 sections of students. Their findings bring more questions than answers as we interrogated whether research on K-12 grading practices could apply to college students and considered the often confusing syllabi structures students navigate. Their work suggests the importance of considering how our class policies impact the range of students and the need for further investigation. Janet Donavan’s piece described the challenges and process of transforming traditional political science curricula into one that addresses diverse perspectives, issues, and problems. By describing her department’s strategy and the existing literature, she provided concrete steps for departments to develop a pedagogical, content, and faculty reward structure based on inclusion. Finally, Diana Owen bridged inclusion and civic engagement literature by emphasizing the inclusive pedagogical changes made to the We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution (WTP) curriculum for multilingual students, students with disabilities, and minoritized middle and high schools. She considered how civics curricula can meet the needs of teachers and minoritized students and address the disparities in the quality of civic education. Her work stresses the need to develop best practices for imparting civic competencies to minoritized student populations.
These presentations and subsequent discussions highlighted multiple methods to achieve inclusive change in the classroom and beyond. From classroom assignments to pedagogical approaches to broad institutional change, there is no “one” way to form an inclusive classroom. However, as political science educators committed to inclusion, we should be willing to try, experiment, and incorporate as many methods as possible.
ALASDAIR BLAIR, DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY
DAVID LINDRUM, FOUNDER OF SOOMO LEARNING
SANDRA MORGENSTERN, MANNHEIM CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN SOCIAL RESEARCH (MZES)
MARK VERBITSKY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
THE POST-COVID-19 CLASSROOM: INNOVATIONS TO KEEP
Three years on since the last in-person APSA TLC in Albuquerque in February 2020, it was great once again to be able to discuss the latest developments in teaching and learning in political science in a face-to-face environment. Indicative of this “new normal,” was the presence of the post-COVID-19 classroom as a new TLC conference track. Spread across two days, 30 track delegates engaged in discussion on some of the most fundamental challenges that teachers of political science face, namely what innovations to keep from our collective experience of teaching during COVID-19. Divided into four areas of focus, 13 presentations were delivered over two days. Key themes that emerged from the discussions included the time involved in developing teaching materials during the COVID-19 period and the stress, particularly in relation to mental health, that was more acutely felt during the pandemic by students and staff. One of the most notable factors is that to even make reference to a post-COVID-19 classroom does not quite reflect the contemporary situation where COVID-19 is very much present.
In thinking about the initial response to the emergence of COVID-19, one of the most notable factors was the way in which responses differed within and between countries. A key question that all educators have faced is how to create a climate in which students feel that they can engage, as well as how best we can support a generation of students who are starting university on the back of a high school education impacted on by COVID-19 in terms of their access to resources and access to friendships. During our discussions, we reflected on the “pandemic induced scars” that many students have faced and the way in which Generation Z students were, and continue to be, shaped by different trends and issues, some of which have been accentuated by COVID-19. Themes of access, time, connections and isolation, were constant points of debate and reflection. Colleagues discussed the way in which academics were increasingly on the “front line” of providing support to students and questioned whether existing models of development and support reflected the challenges that they faced. Such discussions brought to the fore the point that just as the pandemic inflicted “scars” on students, it equally affected staff – a point which can often be overlooked. This includes the extent to which many higher education providers faced significant reductions in student enrollment during the pandemic, which in turn has created a more fragile staffing base. In the discussion that follows we review the four areas of discussion which the track was structured around, namely: online tools and pandemic teaching, institutional changes due to COVID-19, COVID-19 in an international context, and digitally enhanced teaching and learning.
As we explored the topic of online tools and pandemic instruction, our conversations kept revolving around the same concepts: promoting student activation, engagement, and participation. This is no coincidence. Student engagement was one of the biggest challenges in online instruction during the pandemic. However, when we “returned” to face-to-face and hybrid instruction, many of us found that lower student engagement became one of the “pandemic scars."
In the first presentation, Sandra Morgenstern presented how she uses the lessons learned from the pandemic classroom in her post-COVID-19 classroom. Basically, she applies the “flipped classroom” technique, creating videos on various aspects of academic practice to reduce knowledge heterogeneity among students before a face-to-face meeting. With the same desire to encourage more engaged seminar participation, Selim Yilmaz presented his way of using the Socratic method. At its core, the method stimulates knowledge production through interactive communication. In this way, it can also address the lack of confidence and public speaking skills. Ikhsan Darmawan uses a competitive approach to increase student activity in the seminar. In his seminar, a “Comment of the Day” is selected in each session to be awarded a book, while all of the sessions then combine to produce the “Comment of the Semester”, which is honored with an award. This award is not so much a material achievement as a certification of good performance during the semester and can be added to the student’s resume when they apply for graduate studies or internships and jobs.
In reflecting on the presentations, we thought about combining them, e.g., the flipped classroom video preparation for knowledge building with the student activity in the Socratic method in class, and discussed how the different techniques of the Socratic method and the semester prize commentary might play out differently in an online, offline, and hybrid setting – which is up for future comparative research. However, a major argument for replication and transferability was the difference in time and cost to the instructor for the different techniques.
A theme explored in the second session was the question of how COVID-19 has changed our classes and learning environments. In particular, how has the pandemic affected student experience and how can we adapt our classes to reach our students? Renato Corbetta presented findings on a natural experiment with pre- and post-pandemic hybrid classes. He had expected that the experience with remote learning would better prepare students for hybrid learning, but found that in fact students performed worse, leading him to ask, what has changed in students and what do we need to provide? Other panelists tried to answer these questions, reflecting on student participation and expectations. Mark Verbitsky focused on the difficult balance of offering flexibility and accommodation while maintaining a strong class structure. He discussed ideas on how to encourage participation in classes while maximizing flexibility for students in terms of attendance and class activities. Mark Springer expanded on these ideas of participation, explaining best practices for encouraging active participation by involving students in reflecting and assessing their own participation. Finally, Izabela Majewska presented findings on student perceptions of online learning, explaining how offering multiple avenues of interaction in a Community of Inquiry can increase student satisfaction with their learning. Panelists and delegates further discussed what we are discovering about post-pandemic students and our new teaching environment.
In our discussions on COVID-19, one of the questions that came to the fore was the way in which the impact of COVID-19 varied in an international context. This related not only to the experience of teaching in different countries, but the way in which teaching innovations during COVID-19 provided an opportunity for students to learn in an international setting at a time when they were unable to travel. These were issues that were at the forefront of the presentations by Jonathan Snow and Andra Olivia Miljanic. Through a process of using immersive videos, Snow demonstrated how he was able to provide students with an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and also provide innovative opportunities for students to engage with discussions through the use of breakout rooms, which endeavored to replicate the intensity of learning in an international environment at a time when it was not possible to travel. Such a pandemic pivot in teaching and learning was recognized as providing an extremely meaningful learning opportunity and one which colleagues could replicate in their own teaching. In a similar manner, Miljanic highlighted how students could obtain global competences through virtual exchanges, which provided students also with an opportunity to develop important skills such as journaling their experiences through a process of reflection. Finally, Alasdair Blair highlighted the way in which teaching in a post COVID-19-environment may require a considerable rethink of the structure of degree programs to provide students with an opportunity to focus on learning in a more immersive manner through the use of block teaching.
Our track’s final session, on digitally enhanced teaching and learning brought together three very different approaches. Spyridon Kotsovilis sought to foster empathy and compassion among students in his course on war. He assigned the performative reading of sections from Euripides’ “The Women of Troy” interwoven with scenes from the modern conflict in Syria. He saw in his Zoom-bound class an opportunity to invite the Syrian director of this adaptation as a guest speaker and coach for the students, a move which imbued the assignment with a deeper sense of the tragic causes and consequences of war. John N. Anene wanted his students to better understand political action committees (PACs). He provided a rubric to help students analyze how PACs build identity, and asked each student to consider and rank three PACs of their own choosing. Students posted their ratings and rationale to a discussion board, and commented on the posting of others, promoting a robust discussion. Dale Mineshima-Lowe was not alone in seeing instructors adrift in a sea of digital teaching tools, but she was the most active in tossing a life preserver. Providing faculty with a place to explore new technologies was much appreciated. And prompting them to reflect on the best purposes for specific tools struck a nice balance of institutional support and faculty freedom.
What is evident from all of the papers was the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic led to innovations in teaching and learning that were often of a unique and varied manner, and which in many ways were quite distinctive. Many papers emphasized the importance of supporting a generation of students to whom the pandemic brought digital division in terms of access to technology, highlighting broader social divides. Colleagues expressed concern about the trauma that many students experienced and the impact of this on other issues, such as low motivation and poor class engagement. In our discussions on these issues, one track participant commented that “they (the students) seem broken”. As educators, we therefore face significant challenges in addressing some of these issues. This is an issue that is further compounded by the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, which highlighted that the very name of the track was potentially premature in referring to the “post-COVID-19 classroom." One of the challenges here is separating some of the wider societal and generational factors that impact and shape student learning from those issues that are specifically linked to COVID-19. This is an area where there is inevitably going to be a lot of blurring of lines between the generational changes related to the likes of the impact of social media and the way in which the student and staff experience were framed during the pandemic. For us, as educators, the pandemic has brought all of these issues far more into the headlights of our own discussion and, as such, provides an important backdrop to reflect on the innovations that took place during the pandemic and to highlight the need for further innovation to address continuing and future challenges.
CAMERON ARNZEN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
LEONARDO FALABELLA, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
JAIME JACKSON, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
NICOLE FOSTER SHOAF, MISSOURI SOUTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY
KRISTINA VICTOR, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
RETHINKING THE POLITICAL SCIENCE MAJOR: RECRUITMENT, RETENTION, AND CAREERS
The presentations on the Rethinking the Political Science Education: Recruitment, Retention, and Advising track highlight an important question: how do we articulate a common understanding of the value of studying political science? As a discipline, our students care about meaningful political change, diverse political issues, completing their degrees, and moving into the workforce. One challenge we have faced as a discipline, however, is communicating this value added to our students and our communities, and proposed solutions to this challenge were a major focus of our track. A second theme from the track was the need to collectively share and collaborate on the work we are doing in recruitment, retention, curriculum innovation, and advising. Given the additional workload these responsibilities bring with them, developing a department culture of collectively working towards these goals is crucial.
RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
Issues related to recruitment and retention are not monolithic and the first two sessions of the Rethinking the Political Science Education track explored difficulties and opportunities with recruitment and retention. In lieu of reviewing enrollment trends or elaborating challenges facing political science education, these sessions advanced tangible options political science programs can pursue to better support current and prospective students. These two sessions, united in scope, covered topics such as curriculum redesign, capstone assessment, community enhancement activities, and learning support. The presentations sparked robust discussions of moving beyond traditional models of political science to invite and engage a new generation of students.
How does political science continue to draw students who increasingly want to be a part of meaningful change? Multiple presenters proposed thinking critically about how political science curricula and learning outcomes can better appeal to students’ interests. John Phillips evaluated the specific role that major capstones play in supporting student learning outcomes, while Laura Roost and Carlton Kinard more broadly detailed how curricular revisions can intentionally invite students wanting to make a difference in their communities into the vast discipline that is political science, including undergraduate level preparation for career paths in public or non-profit organizations. Similarly, Allison Rank and Joshua Plencner proposed centering political history through the tradition of American Political Development to unite student interests with political science curriculum. Student-centric innovation of our approaches and clearer delivery of learning outcomes can invite more students to the study of political science.
Presentations also prompted discussion of a disconnect between student and faculty visions of political science. Despite being a natural path for students interested in politics and public service, many participants expressed that these students are not immediately drawn to political science. Christopher Lawrence and Bobbi Gentry address this disconnect, tendering that political science may have a public relations problem. The presenters highlighted several ways that we can “make the work we do public” and attractive to students. Michael Thunberg and Steven Sodergren similarly argue that 1-credit experiential courses are one appealing strategy for inviting students into the program while demonstrating the work that we do.
Other presentations elevated the need to support the students we already have. Christopher Riley details the utility of creating intentional spaces for students from underrepresented backgrounds, noting that Career and Calling Circles are a successful strategy to help pre-law students realize their place in the university and their intended profession. In the same vein, Marco Alcocer and co-authors reviewed and shared supplemental online resources for political methods education to supplement introductory quantitative methods courses. These sessions collectively underscored the benefits of within-discipline collaboration through sharing resources and ideas.
The track’s discussion of recruitment and retention also expanded the scope of our work. If political preparedness and civic engagement are shared goals, how broadly do we define our community? Reimagining political science education to include experiences before, after, and alongside the traditional undergraduate curriculum is critical. Inspired by our broader civic mission, political science education can foster cohesive connections with high schools (before), with program alumni (after), and with campus departments who share our values such as student affairs (alongside) to complement the work that we do. These collaborations can tangibly advertise the value of studying political science.
CURRICULUM INNOVATIONS
The curriculum panel focused on the simple yet essential question—what should a political science program look like as we move into the middle of the twenty-first century? With an impending demographic cliff, declining public support for higher education, and a variety of bureaucratic pressures, it is time to rethink political science’s place in the university—in fact, a proactive consideration may be imperative to the discipline’s success in many places. The curriculum panel explored various ways to rethink political science education in the current context.
Victoria Honeyman’s description of a comprehensive program redesign demonstrates the difficulty of rethinking an entire program. Nearly two years into the effort, we see that considering the resources of a university, market demands, available technologies—all alongside what we collectively deem to be essential learning outcomes for our discipline – is an enormous undertaking. Drafting pathways to graduation for students with a variety of evolving interests further challenges efforts. Comprehensive curriculum and program redesigns will have to consider shifts in the discipline over the last century, and be forward-thinking about the future academic and career goals of our students.
As a discipline, political science has shifted significantly into quantitative analysis, but for those students interested in careers in diplomacy, with international organizations, or even domestic work with refugee or immigrant communities, language skills remain critical. Dalia Fahmy’s work to reinvigorate language studies highlights both the value of language studies for political science students, and the increasing need for scholars to secure grant funding to support curriculum development. Similar to Fahmy’s work to expand language training, Jesse Cragwall’s efforts to explore the value of Open Educational Resources (OER) in introductory political science classes was made possible with grant funding. As Cragwall explained, OERs offer an alternative to the rising costs of textbooks, especially for students relying on financial aid disbursements for texts. Traditional textbooks generally come with online homework systems, test banks, lecture slides, and regularly updated news components – few of which are generally available with OERs. This shift can put pressure on faculty with already heavy workloads, but with a grant to support curriculum development or cooperation among multiple faculty members these pressures can be lessened, and students can access course materials without delay and without added financial burden.
Political science does not have a system for accreditation, and grants for curriculum development are both temporary and in short supply. This leaves us with a lot of room to experiment, but also heightens the need for APSA to facilitate the free sharing of curriculum, data, and discipline recruiting materials.
CAREER CONSIDERATIONS
Several presenters stated that enrollment in the political science major has been declining at their institutions. A perceived cause for this decline is that prospective students are increasingly focused on employability, seeking majors that, to their knowledge, primarily teach marketable skills. Such discussions produced an apparent dilemma: should political science programs concede to pressures to teach for the job market, or stand firm in their commitment to fostering civic engagement and critical thinking of political institutions?
The papers presented at TLC show how political science education can fulfill all these promises and help students align rewarding careers and community lives. In that light, Jaime Jackson and Kristina Flores-Victor demonstrate how civic engagement supports students’ careers by letting them see how their degrees have a real-world impact. Their contribution is supplemented by Nicole Foster Shoaf’s discussion of challenges and lessons of an interdisciplinary program focused on experiential learning and professional development. In the spirit of widening possibilities for students, Horia Dijmarescu stresses the importance of helping them see how they can put their education towards different ends, a goal supported by advising, as shown in Bobbi Gentry’s paper discussing how effective advising is conducive to identity development. Finally, William Jennings points to the importance of training teaching assistants to be a part of the advising process, further enhancing student mentorship.
In summary, works discussed in the Rethinking Political Science Education track converge to reveal synergies between the goals of empowering students for the job market as well as civic and community engagement. These contributions also offer concrete advice suited for small and large institutions, offering pathways for preparing students to be effective at work and engaged in society.
MICHELE CALDERON, TOWSON UNIVERSITY
HEATHER KATZ, SOUTHWESTERN OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
RACHEL OLSEN, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
WILLIAM O’BROCHTA, TEXAS LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY
TEACHING RESEARCH, WRITING, AND INFORMATION LITERACY: HOW TO HANDLE MISINFORMATION
Many instructors are intentionally integrating new pedagogical approaches to teaching core political science skills. Reading, writing, and critical thinking skills are both in high demand by many employers and are foundational to students expressing their ideas and becoming active participants in civic life. Our 2023 TLC track explored teaching these skills in the context of the current state of global politics, which is facing the challenge of misinformation, low information literacy, and underdeveloped critical thinking skills.
Presenters agreed that factual information—while important for establishing a foundational level of civic literacy—can be effectively integrated into activities that teach students skills that transfer outside of the classroom. Emphasizing skills is not a new insight, but presenters discussed truly innovative approaches to integrating content and skills that give students more flexibility in directing their learning, integrate high-impact teaching practices, and are carefully assessed. As part of the theme of expanding the scope of political science, we also found great value in partnerships across disciplines and courses. Many institutions are increasingly resource-constrained, and collaboration with pre-existing campus, community, and national programs can help to share best practices and to increase the impact of any one intervention. An excellent opportunity for this work is teaching students to evaluate misinformation by collaborating with librarians, creating common course shells, involving students in developing content, and scaffolding approaches to teaching research, writing, and information literacy across both substantive and methodological courses.
We describe each of these themes below and conclude by calling on instructors to consider their own teaching practices, institutional situation, and student needs and to apply research-based pedagogical practices to enhance student learning. In other words, challenges breed innovation, so now is the time to get innovative!
DON’T EMPHASIZE THE CONTENT, TEACH THE SKILLS
Traditional political science courses that rely heavily on distilling theoretical content are quickly becoming outdated. Students knowing information is insufficient in a 21st century world abounding with mis- and dis-information. Instead, they need to build skills. Students become more prepared for the real world when they actively engage in learning experiences embedded with skills that they can apply outside of the classroom. Employers want to hire graduates that have gained relevant, transferable skills, including critical information analysis, recognizing reputable sources of information, and challenging one’s personal assumptions and bias. Track panelists applied these ideas in a variety of creative ways. Our main take-away was that the discipline needs to focus on skills in addition to content. Skills-based design needs to be incorporated into all courses at all levels and institutions.
Introductory courses are a natural place to start. While attention has traditionally focused on American politics as a place to integrate media literacy and critical thinking skills, Rachel Sternfeld and Michele Calderon presented approaches to teaching introductory world politics and international relations courses. Sternfeld focused on the skill of locating, reading, and analyzing reputable media sources. In her World Politics course, she assigns students a series of six in-class media analyses that build transferable research, writing, and critical analysis skills. Students learn the basic structure of news articles, how to connect current events to theoretical concepts, and recognize reputable sources. They also confront bias and fairness in reporting and gain tools to assess new information. These scaffolding assignments culminate in a final essay in which students demonstrate the skills they have gained over the course of the semester. Students are required to synthesize three articles about a current event and analyze the event using one international relations theory. Similarly, Calderon found creative ways to add an intensive writing component to her introductory international relations course through the use of writing workshops. Typically relegated to composition courses, writing workshops provided an applicable way for students to use writing skills to analyze current events.
Standalone upper-level undergraduate courses are another way to teach information literacy skills. Jarrod Kelly teaches “Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation.” The course focuses on building literacy skills over delivering content as it teaches students how media organizations collect, process, and record information, and what they do if they get something wrong. Students learn about headlines and how they are used as bait, but do not always represent the content of the article. By the end of the course, students are better able to rely on reputable sources and recognize mis- and dis-information.
Even graduate student practitioners working in an information environment can benefit from cultivating information literacy. Celestino Perez presented examples of systems thinking maps created by his military officer graduate students to teach causal literacy. These causal systems maps are useful for evaluating military decisions, but can also be applied to thinking critically about current events and analyzing politician decision-making.
INNOVATE THROUGH SCAFFOLDING
Teaching students skills related to research design, information literacy, and academic writing are all concepts that work well with scaffolding. Introducing and structuring assignments in this way helps students to take the material in pieces and to slowly become more independent in their learning over the course of the term. Scaffolding is also an excellent tool for helping students to manage their time and to stay organized in a particular course.
Scaffolding was an important part of the African Political Systems course presented by M.P. Broache and Rachel Olsen. Students were given smaller assignments throughout the course of the term and encouraged to piece those components together, resulting in longer-length research papers by the end of the course. Their process involved focusing on topic selection, keyword formation, literature reviews, and then emphasizing the importance of citation. Their intervention leveraged online and in-person instruction and suggests future work on scaffolding comparing these approaches.
Scaffolding is also appropriate in introductory courses. William O’Brochta showed how a scaffolded research article writing assignment can help students who are non-majors connect their interests and major to political science. Term-length assignments and projects provide an ideal opportunity to foster curiosity in the discipline and to show students how political science tools and techniques can help to address salient public policy questions.
Benjamin Toll’s presentation focused on a multi-class approach to teaching these skills and involved a political science research module to help introduce and reiterate concepts over semesters. Discussion with current and past students was cited as a specific tool for improving the multi-class curriculum approach, and the need for faculty to discuss where and how these skills are taught and measured was emphasized. J.R. Reiling also scaffolded across courses — this time courses taught to US Army Officers. Officers operate in an environment where education that does not connect to command qualification activities is a waste of precious time. This means that using scaffolding to target the appropriate levels of knowledge for the appropriate audience is critically important. Reiling advocated for increasing the importance of information operations in the military, improving command readiness in the future. His model was similar to the need for undergraduates to be healthy participants in democratic discourse.
TEACHING SKILLS TO EVALUATE MISINFORMATION
Following the insight of emphasizing skills over content, our track centered on information literacy pedagogy. Inviting students to practice ways to evaluate information consistently is vital to developing these critical thinking skills regardless of discipline. However, we do not have to “reinvent the wheel” when teaching information literacy skills. Instructors can adapt assignments and rubrics from a standardized module or resources shared among instructors. Depending on an institution’s resources, librarians can play a fundamental role in organizing and generating these materials.
Barbara Robertson and Tamra Ortgies-Young created a scaffolded lesson plan available through their learning management system designed to be “dumped into” any class among different general education disciplines. The professor can customize the structure of the six mini-lessons to fit the norms of their field and the course objectives and has the added benefit of prepared PowerPoints, assessments, and other resources. The student learning objectives are to learn how to minimize misinformation’s spread and how it is tied to democratic erosion. Robertson and Ortgies-Young reported that 80 percent of students who did not think critical thinking or information literacy was important changed their minds after completing the modules. Terry Gilmour built on this foundation and invited students to participate in creating information literacy modules that were then incorporated into a wide variety of courses. In this way, students become leaders in teaching information literacy to their peers—an empowering opportunity.
Lanethea Mathews-Schultz and Jennie Sweet-Cushman’s holistic approach to teaching American politics reflects the desire to include “caring,” “choosing,” and “doing” into politics rather than concentrating solely on content. Concerning information literacy, this translates to students “knowing” about the information environment but also realizing their role in shaping that environment and using media effectively to produce any desired change. Their work contains sample assignments that, like Robertson and Ortgies-Young, can be adapted to course needs.
Leslie Caughell highlighted that information literacy instruction often emphasizes skills while ignoring the social and cognitive elements that feed it. Directing students to use fact-check websites, read laterally, and know the identifying characteristics of fake news is useful but only part of the picture. News is also a social phenomenon that signals emotional connections and motivations that lie outside of the facts. “Grandma Carol,” the relative we all seem to have who has bought into misinformation, is motivated by signaling social networks. Students are tasked with discovering how misinformation and conspiracy theories travel in news stories, on social media, and in person, specifically how they target people based on cognitive biases. Additionally, students reflect on their emotional responses to news and are encouraged to consider the source’s motivation for publishing information. By removing the focus from content, this approach connects students with the ongoing research in our field and makes students feel less targeted regardless of their ideological preferences.
Having civil conversations about politics can be an important way to develop critical thinking skills that can help to combat information. Stephanie Williams described a course focused on analyzing political speeches that helps students gain the analysis and information literacy skills needed to meaningfully engage in political conversations and to analyze misinformation effectively.
CALL TO ACTION
Political science as a discipline needs to re-evaluate its role in preparing students as engaged citizens and to ensure that majors, courses, and programs are aligned with this mission. While many political scientists have long been invested in this work and APSA Past President John Ishiyama’s task force on rethinking political science education brings these issues to the forefront, presenters in this track demonstrated that key research, writing, and information literacy skills can be effectively taught to a wide variety of students in many different ways. Students from all institutional types, backgrounds, ages, and experience levels can benefit from interventions as small as one-time class activities and as large as major institutional or cross-institutional curricular development.
Our call to APSA and to the broader disciplinary community is to truly integrate research, writing, and information literacy skills into core parts of political science pedagogy. Often these aspects of political science education are reserved for quantitative methodology courses where they are eclipsed by an emphasis on teaching statistical techniques. Not only do research, writing, and information literacy skills take time and require practice to develop, but they form the core of political science education without which content cannot be analyzed or conveyed. We invite all political scientists to reach out to colleagues and to establish relationships with partners across and off-campus to help to develop students as effective communicators and consumers of information.
PETRA HENDRICKSON, NORTHERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY
SIMULATIONS AND GAMES
The Simulations and Games Track this year explored and troubleshooted all stages of games and simulations use. Papers focused on the themes of design and development, practical advice for implementation, evidence arising from implementation, and the possibility of games and simulations as opportunities for underrepresented students. Presentations in this track came from a variety of subfields and perspectives, demonstrating that simulations and games are a viable tool for all areas of political science. Presenters came from a variety of backgrounds and institutions, and had varying degrees of experience with utilizing games and simulations, from first-time users to multi-decade veterans.
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
The first major theme that emerged in the Track surrounded design and development, and how to ground activities in the broader learning environment. Across this theme, the proposed games and simulations had not yet been implemented, but careful attention was paid to their construction and anticipated outcomes.
Michael Sacco presented “Founders’ Forum Classroom Simulation,” discussing his creation of a constitution-building simulation. Sacco designed the simulation to help students retain knowledge, recover their motivation to learn and rebuild skills lost during the pandemic, especially communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Sacco anticipates the simulation being useful for Introduction to American Politics, with the constitutional development during the simulation illustrating US democratic principles like the role of the two-party system in shaping negotiations, adopting policies and a constitution for the sake of society, and the contemporary and future implications of the constitution.
Iva Božović’s presentation was entitled “Simulating International Organizations’ Pressure on Control of Corruption” and focused on the development of an international political economy simulation to explore the interaction between domestic actors and the World Bank. Božović’s goal is to conduct an experiment testing the impact of the simulation on student learning compared to a more traditional lecture on the World Bank’s structure, funding, and operations. The guiding question of the simulation is whether an infrastructure or tax collection reform project proposed by a country gets funded. Students will participate in the simulation in teams of World Bank donors, the World Bank country office, members of the government, and civil society. During the simulation, interventions like donors requesting additional details about the infrastructure project and the emergence of a potential non-Bank donor will complicate the decision-making process.
The last presentation in this theme was “Back to Basics: Building an Asynchronous Online Simulation” by Simon Usherwood, who emphasized that keeping the design process—clear learning objectives, alignment between the game and the learning objectives, and a debriefing that uses the simulation to expand back out to other learning—can help when working through a new project. Usherwood has developed a four-week unit on negotiations within a unique context. The unit must: use a distance learning model with no synchronous interaction; be highly scalable and work with a wide range of student enrollment; and be possible to undertake offline or without any interaction at all. During the unit, Usherwood will utilize different design options for rounds of negotiations that exist alongside other, non-simulation material. Usherwood emphasized the importance of resilient game design and effective debriefing to maximize the benefit and impact of the simulation.
PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR IMPLEMENTATION
The second theme was from presenters who have utilized simulations and games in classes, but have not necessarily collected systematic data on the use of those exercises. These presentations focused on details concerning effective implementation of simulations and games.
Brian King’s presentation, “Teaching Constitutional Law to Undergraduates as a Semester-Long Simulation,” discussed a multi-week simulation of the Supreme Court in a constitutional law class. King spends the first two weeks of the semester covering legal philosophies and the processes of the Supreme Court, with remaining weeks consisting of court cycles. Each cycle considers multiple cases. Students are assigned roles as lawyers or justices. Lawyers outline and conduct oral arguments. Justices discuss the merits of the cases and write majority and dissenting opinions based on their vote. At the end of each cycle, a debriefing session revisits ideas and connects them back to cases.
Brian Brew’s “Teaching Electoral Institutions Using In-Class Simulations” presentation discussed a simulation of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus in a 200-level American Politics course. The goals were to highlight how electoral institutions structure political outcomes and to have students explicitly consider how people’s backgrounds and lived experiences affect political choices. The simulation also helped students hone their research skills and practice making informed decisions. Each student was assigned a character with a name, brief backstory, and a most-preferred candidate. Students researched materials related to the democratic candidates and developed a list of the top eight candidates based on their character, as well as whether their character would vote for any candidate outside their first choice. The simulation itself followed the Iowa caucus as closely as possible. King debriefed the simulation with additional discussion of electoral math, different electoral options, and how different models would apportion delegates differently.
Victor Asal and Joseph Roberts led an interactive session with “Dictators & Finding the Insurgent: Three Games on Oppression & Resistance.” They first demonstrated a game where students are presented with a variety of scenarios and asked to sit down if they would not want to protest. Students debriefed by asking why people made the decisions they did, illustrating rationalist theory. In Dictatorship and Democracy, two students volunteer to be dictators over two groups. One is then told that they now lead a democracy. In each group, either everyone gets one extra credit point on the next quiz or one person (chosen by the majority or the dictator) gets five points. In the dictatorship, the dictator usually gives themselves five points, while the democracy is usually more equitable. Students debrief on the impact of state structure, highlighting institutionalism. Finally, in Who Is the Insurgent, students are told that the role of insurgent has been privately assigned to one or more students and tasked with identifying the insurgents. Debriefing focuses on what made identified students suspicious, provoking deeper discussion on the possible impact of differences, implicit bias, and demonization after it is revealed that there were no insurgents at all.
In “Field Work, Pedagogy, and Re-Energizing Active Learning through Groups,” Deborah L. Wheeler and Susan L. Ostermann highlighted how field work could form the basis of and inspiration for class activities. Wheeler discussed two projects. In the first, teams of students plan and implement a field work project that can be completed on campus. In Shark Tank for Peace, groups of students spend a week presenting confidence-building exercises. Ostermann’s own fieldwork has inspired three exercises. The first deals with public goods provision in South Asia, helping students understand incentives to engage in corruption and black markets. The second game explores voting behavior in non-programmatic areas in Uttar Pradesh, India, with students receiving roles and being tasked with forming coalitions. In the third game, students take on roles related to pre-Partition India and must negotiate a way forward, illustrating the challenge of arriving at an alternative outcome.
Rhonda L. Callaway and Julie Harrelson-Stephens shared “Role Playing across Universities: NATO’s Response to the Invasion of Ukraine,” a two-campus Zoom-based simulation highlighting the inner workings of NATO. Students were divided into groups with members from each campus. Students first completed a country profile. The simulation included public shocks announced each class period along with private shocks to each country. At the end of each day, students filled out action sheets with whether they thought they had reached a consensus on an action. Overall, the simulation took the topic of alliances, often dealt with more superficially, and gave students a deeper experience and understanding of how such relationships actually function.
The last presentation in this theme was “From ‘Spectacular Failure’ to Success: Board Games as Effective Teaching Tools” by Petra Hendrickson, which offered strategies and best practices for using board games in classes. In Hendrickson’s experience, using board games to illustrate a specific topic or concept works best. Using games or variations on games that students are more likely to already be familiar with can also facilitate success by lowering the cognitive load for students to understand both the game’s mechanics and its relationship to class material. Finally, reflection is especially important to ensure that students are making the necessary connections between game play and the real life concepts the games are proxying.
EVIDENCE ARISING FROM IMPLEMENTATION
The third theme that emerged focused on the empirical results of implementation of specific simulations and active learning experiences. In these cases, data was typically gathered both on the efficacy of the exercise as a learning experience and perhaps on student affect toward the activity.
Robbin Smith presented on “Simulations, Jurisprudence, and Critical Thinking: A Case Study.” Smith adopted a role playing writing exercise for a 200-level general education course required for the legal studies concentration. The goal of the project is to help students acquire jurisprudence knowledge, recognize their own preferences for judicial styles, and develop critical thinking skills. Students begin the project by reading Supreme Court decisions to practice identifying jurisprudence theories. Students are then provided with information about a fictional country and an appealed guilty verdict in a criminal case. Students write appellate decisions from two distinct legal theories, and reflect on their selections and what theories they would like to see represented on the Supreme Court. Reflections indicate an understanding of the implications of different theoretical approaches and an acquisition of jurisprudence knowledge. Additional data collection reveals that students in the course outperformed the university average in critical thinking assessment criteria.
In “Using Prediction Markets as a Tool for Classroom and Civil Engagement,” Zachary McGee and Precious Hall discussed utilizing a prediction market for the 2022 Congressional elections. Candidates operated as the “stocks.” The prediction markets were used in two sections of Introduction to American Politics and a section of a Congress course. One section of American Politics served as the control group. The exercise ran from the beginning of the semester through the midterm elections. Compared to the control group, at the end of the simulation, more students in the experimental groups correctly answered basic congressional knowledge questions, became more interested in politics, increased their media consumption and social media posting about politics, and became more likely to encourage participation in politics.
Ian Anson’s “Teaching US Constitutional Design: The Case of the ‘Genovian Revolution’" ended this theme with a discussion of an Introduction to American Politics constitution-building simulation. The simulation relies on a fictional case with problems that resemble the conditions at the US Constitutional Convention: states with different types of populations and levels of human development, a regional caste system, an external military threat, and loyalists. The simulation takes three class periods, with students engaging in lighthearted but intense contestation over institutional roles, becoming more somber as they realize the incentives for limiting democratic participation and shifting to saber rattling and threats of secession. Attempts to compromise are often unsuccessful, and the constitution is rarely ratified. Data collected on the activity reveals that constitutional knowledge increases and that students enjoy the simulation.
GAMES AND SIMULATIONS AS OPPORTUNITIES FOR UNDERREPRESENTED STUDENTS
The last theme that emerged is the opportunities that games and simulations can offer to students who might not otherwise have them. “Working with High School Teachers to Develop Equitable Global Civic Learning” by Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Michele Calderon, Connor Cameron, Madeleine Meyer, and Alexia Fitz focused on a Model UN conference organized and held by Towson University and Towson students to broaden educational and civic engagement opportunities for college-bound students from Baltimore County and surrounding counties. The Model UN experience involves training for the high school students in workshops leading up to and after the conference. The researchers have conducted focus groups with participating teachers, who emphasized the importance of the opportunity for extracurricular activities for their students, college readiness, the sense of efficacy gained by the students, and the extent to which the students learned to work with others and developed global awareness.
