The paper examines the challenges of teaching about the impact of nuclear weapons on international relations to students who were born after the Cold War and suggests a variety of pedagogical approaches for helping them understand this impact including readings, media, and simulations. We first discuss the value of a multi-methods approach to teaching about nuclear weapons and then discuss resources for these different approaches. For readings, we identify key writing framed as debates that have worked with undergraduates like Waltz and Sagan as well as key articles and literature reviews and historical literature about the actual use of nuclear weapons during World War II. We then discuss different multimedia such as movies and music. Finally, we discuss in class simulations with a focus on Nuclear Diplomacy, providing some examples of student reaction to playing these simulations.

This article reflects on the challenges that social and political disengagement pose within the university environment, and offers an alternative pedagogical solution centred on praxis. To retain the functional role of education for the reproduction of democracy, the article contends that the challenges posed by mass education, the corporatisation of university life and the alienating impact of neoliberal discourse mean that the solution to engagement and participation within university, and beyond, lies in teaching activism.

There is now a rich pedagogical literature that attests to the absolute centrality of assessment and feedback in effective student learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. And yet – despite this consensus in the pedagogical literature over the crucial importance of assessment and feedback – they are not, it seems, fulfilling their purpose or potential for students or lecturers alike. This symposium starts from the premise that assessment and feedback matter, that they are not working at present and that we need to find ways to do them differently. The symposium brings together five original articles from contributors who all want to explore alternative ways of thinking about, and doing, assessment and/or feedback so that they work better both for our students and for us as their lecturers.

A key learning outcome for undergraduate linguistics courses is for students to learn to reason scientifically about language. This article presents the findings from a think-aloud study of undergraduates in an introductory linguistics course who were in the process of learning linguistic reasoning about phonology. I describe the students’ developing concepts and make recommendations for instructors to help students develop fully formed linguistics concepts and the ability to think scientifically about language.

This study proposes a design for and examines the effects of a PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING approach to the promotion and assessment of deep learning in undergraduate linguistics education. Specifically, it reports on how the higher-order learning outcomes are achieved by students through a semester-long problem-solving task in an introductory Spanish linguistics course. Specific teaching strategies are described, and achievement is measured by student grades, self-evaluations, and reflections. This approach has proven effective for stimulating such higher-order thinking skills as (i) applying knowledge of the material to solving linguistic problems, (ii) developing skills in research and critical analysis, and (iii) developing a professional work ethic.

One of the most important challenges facing Political Science Faculty is the way in which the curriculum engages with, and responds to, the populist tide that has spread across a significant number of countries in recent decades. Over recent years there has been an increased level of research activity that has sought to explain the factors for the rise in populism. Yet less attention has been focused on the way in which the political science curriculum could, or should, respond to this change. This article provides an introductory landscape that sets out these challenges and identifies the contextual background for the three articles which comprise this symposium.

Constructed languages (purposefully invented languages like Esperanto and Klingon) have long captured the human imagination. They can also be used as pedagogical tools in the linguistics classroom to enhance how certain aspects of linguistics are taught and to broaden the appeal of linguistics as a field. In this article, I discuss the history and nature of constructed languages and describe various ways I have successfully brought them into use in the classroom. I conclude from the results of my courses that linguists should take a closer look at how they might benefit from similarly enlisting this often criticized hobby into more mainstream use in the linguistics classroom.

This article argues that democracy is on life support in the United States. Throughout the social order, the forces of predatory capitalism are on the march—dismantling the welfare state, corrupting politics with outside money, defunding higher education, expanding the corporate-surveillance-military state, widening inequalities in wealth and income, and waging a war on low income and poor minorities. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish—from higher education to health care centers—there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values, and the common good. This article argues that given this current crisis, educators, artists, intellectuals, youth, and workers need a new political and pedagogical language centered around the notion of radical democracy in order to address the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence of resources—financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological—to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control.

Increasingly, simulation-based teaching and learning is finding a place within politics and international relations (IR) programmes. The majority of literature on this style of teaching and learning has positioned it as both an aid to content delivery and as a response to the many challenges facing contemporary higher education. Little guidance is given, however, to the practical considerations of using simulations as a component of assessment or as informing assessed tasks. This article draws upon the experience of the authors in adapting the well-established Model United Nations (MUN) simulation programme for delivery as an assessed module at a British university. This has involved balancing institutional teaching, assessment and validation requirements with the successful simulation of diplomatic practice. The article introduces the MUN simulation and explores the extant pedagogic literature encouraging the use of simulation-based learning in IR curricula, before moving on to provide an overview of the rationale for the various decisions the authors have made in adapting the simulation for delivery as an assessed curriculum component. The article asserts the value of introducing assessed simulations within IR coursework and provides guidance on how student performance in pedagogic simulations might best be assessed.

This article describes a pedagogical innovation implemented in our introductory linguistics course. We supplement classic theory building with a series of labs, deployed through a co-requisite ‘lab’ course that meets weekly. This builds on two previously established teaching strategies: the implementation of hands-on activities in linguistics classrooms, and the lab sections traditionally utilized in the natural sciences. The labs aim to fulfill three goals: (i) to better represent the field of linguistics in our introductory course, (ii) to help students solidify theories and connect them to the real world, and (iii) to teach practical skills for linguistics research and more broadly.

This article evaluates the use of audio feedback on assignments through the case study of a politics course and argues that audio feedback provides a more personal feel to feedback. Criticism, it appears, is easier to accept in the spoken word. In addition, the article highlights the chief practical benefit of audio feedback, namely that it reduces the overall time spent by lecturers in providing comments. But while the article is positive in favour of audio feedback, it also discusses some potential challenges that include anonymous marking and the fact that one size does not fit all, with different students preferring different types of feedback. Finally, the article identifies a number of practical tips that relate to the adoption of this method of feedback.

This article examines how the political science department of a small, regional university (Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania) has tried to develop activities that will help internationalise the student body and the campus. The article examines, in an attempt to prepare and internationalise students, the departments’ short-term study abroad opportunities. In particular, the article evaluates one course as a case study and proposes a new method aimed at trying to assess its efficacy. In doing so, this article will review the literature on the impact of study abroad, focusing on short-term study (or faculty-led) experiences and discuss the pedagogical motivations of such courses. Finally, the article will propose, and preliminarily test, a new method of assessing short-term study about courses. The conclusion of this article speculates on the final results and details the substantial barriers to replication and augmentation of these programmes.

This article describes how students can be introduced to the basics of linguistic analysis using personal, product, and place names as data. I outline several areas of linguistics that can be effectively taught at an introductory level through name data and provide examples of accompanying in-class and take-home exercises. Throughout the article, I demonstrate that the everyday familiarity of names and the ready availability of name data combine to create a class that not only engages students but also teaches them practical data-analysis skills.

The phenomenon known as emergency eLearning saw many institutions of higher education switch from face-to-face learning to virtual or online course delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition posed a unique suite of challenges to instructors and students alike, especially in the case of active learning pedagogy. This article reflects on the experiences of a multi-institutional, multi-term pedagogical project that implemented peer review assignments as opportunities for asynchronous but nevertheless active learning. We shared instructor experiences through the course design and application stages of courses in International Relations and political economy, discuss the ability of peer review assignments to create active learning opportunities in online courses, and reflect on our own pedagogical development benefited from the community of practice.

Over the past decade, the use of web-based learning has increased, as has reliance on internet-based communication tools and learning environments. On the basis of a short study at Canterbury Christ Church University, this article will look at student use of Blackboard and the potential use of Facebook in higher education.

We introduce a pedagogical initiative, which we call COLLABORATIVE ACTIVE LEARNING RESEARCH-BASED EDUCATION (CARE), for incorporating authentic research into the undergraduate classroom. CARE is founded on a broad base of pedagogical scholarship, which we summarize. We propose that there are numerous benefits to engaging students in research at the undergraduate level in the phonetics/phonology classroom, provided that the integration of research is done in a pedagogically sound manner. We describe an initiative carried out in the Spring 2019 semester, in which students in combined phonetics/phonology classes carried out acoustic and ultrasound studies of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation while simultaneously investigating vowel harmony from a phonological perspective. We propose that the CARE approach to developing a course-based undergraduate research experience is one way to integrate laboratory phonology into the undergraduate curriculum.

Despite increasing access to high quality television (TV) series in the golden age of television, political scientists (and especially scholars of comparative politics) have not systematically considered the possibilities that television series might offer for instruction. This article aims to fill this gap by illustrating the opportunities for teaching political science using TV series and outlining ways of integrating television series into the classroom using selected clips, screening full episodes, or using an entire series as a text. We then illustrate these methods by discussing ways that television series might be used in a typical introductory course on European politics.

Recognising that the world into which students emerge upon graduation is characterised by constant change, we embrace a critical pedagogy that can be implemented in the classroom through the use of freehand drawing. Freehand drawing is a technique that can stimulate a critical stance, as visual representations allow us to comprehend the world differently, while permitting us see how others understand the world. First year students, in their first lecture, were asked to draw their interpretations of Irish politics and to explain in writing what they had drawn. The students were then placed in groups and asked to note what they saw in each other's drawings, allowing for the identification of general patterns and themes. In this context, freehand drawing facilitates our ability to: ‘see’ how we understand a topic and that there are multiple ways of understanding; test theories, orthodoxies and accepted truths; scrutinise tacit assumptions; and ponder other possibilities. In employing freehand drawing in this manner, our aim is to create a learning environment where students develop their capacity for critical self-reflection.

Despite attempts by higher education institutions to improve the quality of feedback on assessed work, dissatisfaction expressed by students remains visible. This article draws upon the preliminary findings of a Higher Education Academy Collaborative Research Project on assessment feedback within two large political science and international relations departments. It offers a critical review of current feedback practices and processes and identifies four key issues – negativity, transferability, intelligibility, and consistency – that require attention in order to deliver more effective assessment feedback. The article also suggests practical ways forward in addressing these issues, highlighting in particular the importance of both structure and timing in helping to produce high-quality feedback efficiently.

The creators of The Simpsons have constructed a model of society, one which due to the show's longevity and popularity can be used by the teacher of politics to illustrate key points of the curriculum. This article suggests three such uses of The Simpsons, namely the depiction of gender in society, the nature of politicians, and what can and cannot be banned with regard to public health.