The ability to integrate learning--to make connections across classes or even within a single class--is integral to students becoming better learners, and to growing their capacity to perform as civic actors. We discuss an upper-level Campaigns and Elections class in which the course structure and assignments were set up to encourage students to…

Political Science research methods courses face two problems. First is what to cover, as there are too many techniques to explore in any one course. Second is dealing with student anxiety around quantitative material. We explore a novel way to approach these issues. Our students began by writing a qualitative paper. They followed with a term…

One of the most important skills students can learn is how to use multiple, conflicting sources of information to formulate and defend positions on political issues. However, when we assign students to do this, all instructors see is the final product. Not knowing the process by which students do these assignments makes it difficult to help them…

I examine the impact of simulations on student learning and on the growth of civic competence in an introductory American government class. By civic competence, I refer to an individual's skill and ability to make sense of vast amounts of political information; to work with others (and in civil opposition to other people's ideas) where…

This chapter takes the somewhat unorthodox stance that the central purpose of an introductory political science course is not to prepare students for future political science courses but rather to prepare them for a lifetime of democratic citizenship. It suggests that the way to do this is not by primarily teaching content but by offering…