Politics & International Relations

Political Game-playing (Scott Downham)

I wanted to facilitate some of the most effective learning, like experiential and situative learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), with students actively working in the roles studied. In my Introduction to Politics seminar, on deliberative and post-representative democracy, we contrasted three different forms of democracy. I gamified learning into a role-play situation (Vanek & Peterson, 2016). I knew the game would not be realistic, or work, without real stakes, so I brought in fun size sweets. It was presented to students in this slide.

It was fun. The highlight was one seminar group’s Prime Minister announcing their particular policy for the distribution of sweets (firstly decided by politicians alone) then being met with disbelief, heckling and boos from the public. Of course, the Prime Minister was self-selected, therefore they were the most outgoing student in the class so enjoyed the banter. Once the Prime minister received the citizens assembly’s recommendations, they eventually opted to accept the citizens’ assembly’s reccomendations in full, then won the referendum on it.

I actually heard a couple of comments about the lesson being fun, so this is the type of lesson I would like to do much more of. I reflected that students might not remember class content by the time assessments come around, but if they remember a topic was fun, that should make it less daunting to revise when needed. Spurring enthusiasm is half the battle.

References

Vanek, A., & Peterson, A. (2016). Live action role-playing (LARP): Insight into an underutilized educational tool. Learning, education and games, 2, 219-240.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Situated_Learning/CAVIOrW3vYAC?hl=en

Sparking Enthusiasm for Research Methods among Political Science Students – 

Applying the ‘Reality Show’ Approach (Diana Bartmann, Political Science) 

Although research methods are an indispensable part of every political science curriculum at universities in Britain (Parker, 2010), the majority of students does not particularly enjoy them. Whereas some students consider research methods to be difficult and dry compared to other modules (Edwards and Thatcher, 2004), others simply do not recognise their relevance beyond the academic context (Hubbell, 1994). Research suggests that traditional teaching methods, which rely on rather passive and lecture-based approaches, tend to fail to increase students’ motivation to engage with research methods modules (Edwards and Thatcher, 2004). Instead, a student-centred approach, characterised by activity-based learning in small group settings, has been found to be more effective and results in higher engagement and lower failure rates (Bell, 2016).

The goal of Ryan et al.’s (2014, p.95) proposed ‘reality show’ approach is to ‘make the methods come alive for students’. Inspired by this approach, the PR1000 seminars allow the students to evaluate a range of research methods in practice and apply their accumulated knowledge to their assignments. For instance, instead of merely talking about how interviews and focus groups might be conducted at some point in the future, students are supposed to interview each other and conduct their own focus group within the scope of the seminars. Also, students conduct their own brief surveys, which has proven to be particularly helpful with regard to formulating adequate survey questions and analysing survey data. The activity-based learning approach does not only enable students to gain hands-on research experience, which shall enhance their confidence pertaining to their own research projects, but it also deepens their subject knowledge by allowing them to experience and reflect on the merits and limitations of each method (Sullivan and De Bruin, 2023). Furthermore, audio-visual materials are incorporated where appropriate, since the latter have been found to have a positive impact on students’ learning outcomes and overall engagement (Roberts, 2008). Video clips of recent political speeches are shown to the students to practice text analysis, for instance. Of course, written transcripts are provided, too, to cater to different learning preferences, as some students may favour to read a speech. 

Since I keep a teaching journal, it is possible to monitor and evaluate students’ engagement to a certain extent, even though the small sample size (n=49) is obviously not representative. More than one-third (36.73%/18) of all students attended at least 80% of all seminars, and 10 out of them achieved a first in their last assignment. This allows for the cautious conclusion that in my case applying the ‘reality show’ approach seems to have the potential to spark enthusiasm for research methods among some political science students at least. 

References

• Bell, R. (2016) ‘The Continuing Search to Find a More Effective and Less Intimidating Way to Teach Research Methods in Higher Education’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 53 (3), 285-295.

• Edwards, D. and Thatcher, J. (2004) ‘A Student-Centred Tutor-Led Approach to Teaching Research Methods’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 28 (2), 195-206.

• Hubbell, L. (1994) ‘Teaching Research Methods: An Experiential and Heterodoxical Approach’, PS Political Science & Politics, 27 (1), 60-64.

• Parker, J. (2010) ‘Undergraduate Research-Methods Training in Political Science: A Comparative Perspective’, PS Political Science & Politics, 43 (1), 121-125.

• Roberts, M. (2008) ‘Adventures in Podcasting’, PS Political Science & Politics, 41 (3), 585-593.

• Ryan, M., Saunders, C., Rainsford, E. and Thompson, E. (2014) ‘Improving Research Methods Teaching and Learning in Politics and International Relations: A ‘Reality Show’ Approach’, Politics (Manchester, England), 34 (1), 85-97.

• Sullivan, H. and De Bruin, E. (2023) ‘Teaching Undergraduates Research Methods: A “Methods Lab” Approach’, PS Political Science & Politics, 56 (2), 309-314.

The Active Lecture (Luke Coughlan, PIR)

Lectures remain the primary vehicle for teaching at the undergraduate level. But is this a good thing? Advocates of the lecture cite its traditional role in academic teaching. Inevitably, students will need to absorb a great deal of basic theory about the subject area. The lecture is a time-efficient way of achieving this. In an ideal sense, students will realise that engaging with lectures is central to their academic performance. They may also be inspired by "the sage on the stage", a subject area brought to life by a charismatic orator.

However, critics argue lectures are an ineffective form of delivery. It situates students in a passive position. It asks them to concentrate on a single person for 50 minutes. The lecture raises countervailing problems of under stimulation and cognitive overload. Students are frequently distracted in lectures, and the material is often too impenetrable to encourage second-order thinking. Indeed, courses that promote active learning (group work, problem-solving and discussion) lead to better student performance.

The synthesis of this debate is to include more "active" elements in traditional lectures. Rather than talk for 50 minutes, instructors should ensure that opportunities for student feedback and online activities (e.g. quizzes) are incorporated. This breaks up the monotony of the lecture and gives students incentives to engage with the process. One active element I intend to use in my class on political ideology is to encourage students to complete a short survey on their own ideology prior to class. We could then compare student’s ideology to famous historical figures. This can be used to ground the discussion in way that’s personally relevant to students. It also gives them a practical understanding of how ideology is traditionally measured and operationalised.

Incorporating a pre-session task (especially one that is not considered by students to be overly burdensome) is a good way of encouraging auto-didactic habits. It also overcomes a problem associated with “flipped classrooms” (in which students watch pre-recorded lectures prior to class, and in-class sessions focus on discussion). Flipped classrooms tend to favour students who are more capable at the beginning of the course, which may reinforce inequalities in attainment based on socio-economic background. On the other hand, gamified tasks like the one suggested offer a low-threshold tool for understanding complex topics.

Response

You make a very convincing case for more interactive elements to break up a lecture with low-threshold activities that contain a personal dimension. Political ideology lends itself to the idea of a personal quiz, and of course there are many established formats around that would also be interesting to discuss in a lecture. I really like this idea and will be sure to use it in the future.

Developing this idea further so that it could be used for other topics, too, I could imagine creating a short list of the main points of a lecture and turning these into opinion polls (either asking students to agree/disagree with a statement or asking for their ideas and associations). The polls could be used at the start of each new point in the lecture, thus punctuating its flow and drawing students into its delivery.  One app I used recently to do something similar is slido.com - cf. my write-up of how it went on the T&L History page (https://sites.google.com/view/tlspace/history?authuser=0).                                                                  Sandra Lipner, History

Teaching Research Methods (Laura Serra, Political Science)

Research Methods classes – and quantitative methods in particular – can be very daunting for students who do not feel comfortable being confronted with mathematical and highly technical content. A priority for teachers of Research Methods is thus to make class content as approachable as possible, and to ensure teachers are aware of any challenges students might be experiencing, so that any problem can find a quick solution and students are not left behind. To this end, in the Research Methods classes I have taught, we have implemented two approaches that proved quite successful in (1) piquing students’ interest and (2) gauging their skill level throughout the course.

(1)   To ensure students would find class content engaging and not dismiss it as boring or useless, we have encouraged students to apply the research methods learned in class to topics that they found interesting, even if not strictly related to Politics and International Relations. For example, as part of the class exercises, students would be encouraged to collect their own data (e.g. through small-sample surveys amongst their peers) and use this to practice their analytical skills. This helped them feel like they had ownership and agency towards the research process, and to feel invested in the results of their studies.

(2)   To ensure teachers were aware of how students were doing in the course and could identify any areas of concern, we introduced short multiple-choice, anonymous questions in the lecture. Every 20 minutes or so, the lecture convenor would present a question on Mentimeter that students would be required to answer immediately from their own devices. Within a few seconds results would pop up on the screen and both the teachers and students would be able to see if and how many students guessed the correct answer. If we were to ask students directly, they might not answer out of shyness, or only the most knowledgeable students might answer, which would not be helpful to assess how the class is progressing as a whole. Distributing anonymous surveys, on the other hand, ensured teachers got an accurate picture from the whole class and could manage the remaining of the lesson accordingly.     

Response:

I really like the idea of giving students a practical task. This encourages them to apply theoretical knowledge to the real world, and gives them a sense of ownership over their learning. These skills are vital to further academic study, and for the graduate workplace. One thing I would suggest is make the students collecting their own survey data an activity in itself. From my experience teaching this class, this really makes students engage with how to word questions and how to tabulate and analyse survey data. Such an active learning approach engages students more than using second-hand data. 

Luke Coughlan

Democritus' Philosophy (Pablo Perez Castello)

In a lesson on Democritus I provided students with a brief text and a couple of questions provided by the lecturer. This was the norm in most seminars. Generally speaking I tended to be the one that would impel students to answer questions. In this occasion, and after handing the handout, I explained that Piaget demonstrated that speaking is not a mere translation of thought into speaking, but that we rather learn through speaking. This was something with which I opened our seminar sessions in the very first seminar. I also explained some basic pedagogy by Lev Vygotsky in and said to participants we would always sit in a circle in that first seminar. After two seminars students themselves started to organize the tables and chairs, sometimes before I arrived. My aim was to encourage students to participate and don’t feel shy or constrained about it. Sentences such as ‘children learn to walk by falling’, or ‘we learn by making mistakes’ were recurrent in our seminars. After explaining about Piaget, I told students I wanted our seminar sessions to be closer to a group discussion, that is, exchanges among students without my participation, than a seminar mainly led by me through questions. This meant that in this seminar they would have to lead the session by discussing the questions in the handout and debate whether they thought that Democritus was right. The session went surprisingly well, students were more engaged than usual, and they liked how it worked, particularly when none of the students knew how to answer a question and realized that eventually through discussion they found out the right answer. In the next session on Protagoras I repeated this method and it didn’t work as well. The reasons, it seems to me, were that the text provided didn’t give so much room for discussion and there were more students than in the previous session. These experiences taught me that: 

1.       Building up a space in which students feel comfortable speaking is crucial

2.       This should be done from the very first day and work on it in every seminar

3.       The same method does not always work. It depends on the material one is covering, number of students attending the session and other factors

4.       Space and where students are located matters 

Response:

Hello Pablo, and thank you for your post. I also work to create a comfortable environment for my students; my philosophy being that such a space enables them to contribute more effectively to the session. Though my subject area expects students to frequently present themselves and their work, creating an effective area for debate or questioning is obviously applicable for most fields. Though surely it took students varying times to feel comfortable enough to actively participate, did you find that any of your students did not respond well to the structure of open dialogue for the entirety of the course? (Alex Watson, Drama, Theatre, and Dance)

Kindergarten Philosophy! (Vincent Castilino, Philosophy)

To drive home the argument of Soren Kierkegaard who speaks of the inadequacy of Hegel's ethical framework to explain religion, particularly faith, I used a kindergarten tool-kit. Basing on the Biblical event of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1-19), Kierkegaard claims that the notion of ethics and the universal (as postulated by Kant or Hegel) is insufficient to grasp the faith of Abraham, the protagonist of the Biblical episode. 

To show that an ethical framework, even though complete in itself and useful to understand human life and interactions, could still be inadequate in making sense of some other aspect of the varied human living, I brought a set of alphabet blocks to the seminar. I asked two of the students to verify that the set was complete, another two to spell out the word 'Thursday', another couple to verify the spelling, the next pair to spell out 'February' using the same alphabet set. While the first group had no difficulty completing the task of spelling 'Thursday', the latter were left a bit perplexed for they didn't have a second 'r' to complete 'February'. All of this took no more than 4 - 5 minutes. Not only was the point clear, and the exercise engaging, it facilitated our discussion on how religion can or cannot be discussed from within an established philosophical outlook. 

Not sure if philosophy can be taught to tiny-tots in the kindergarten, but that the latter's learning aids are still useful to a graduate class studying philosophy is certain!

Response:

Hi Vincent, that sounds like a brilliantly simple way to bring home a more complex philosophical issue. How did the students respond to it? I have found that some of my students feel a bit patronised when I ask them to engage in certain activities, have you ever found that to be the case? (Laura Schack, International Relations)

Vincent's response to Laura's comment above:

Thanks Laura. The students enjoyed this exercise.  Since it wasn't long-winding and complicated, the activity is over even before they start to form an opinion about it. Any activity planned for the seminar is always with the intent of driving home a point or triggering a discussion. As long as the students feel they are the ones who are making the points or raising the questions - and they know that they will be heard - they gladly participate. In such a situation, as the tutor one needs to be open to hear answers or points which one is not really prepared for or not even thought about.  Incorporating those points into the prepared structure one is ready with, is the challenge for the tutor. It is 'learning' that is the primary intent, not 'my teaching'.  

Feminism and Gender: Back to the Basics (Laura Schack, International Relations)

At first I wanted to write about an activity I used to teach International Relations constructivist theory, which involved a ‘speed-dating’ game in which students had 2 minutes to discuss one specific question relating to constructivism before moving on to a new partner and discussion topic. The activity worked quite well, despite some moaning about having to move around from the students.

However, I recently taught a class on feminist and gender-related International Relations theories, which resulted in one of the most productive and engaged discussions I have had with my students over almost two terms of teaching IR theory. Rather than being confined by an activity-related framework (which can certainly be useful in other scenarios) I ended up discarding much of the lesson plan for the seminars in favour of open discussion.

Today, feminism and gender-related issues can feel very controversial because of the often contentious and divisive debates which are occurring in the public sphere. This can make feminism and gender-related issues difficult to discuss in academic settings, simply because it is difficult to separate the subject from the value- and emotion-laden debates going on around us.

I have found that disagreements often come from the fact that people are debating from different definitional foundations. Two people having an argument may actually agree with each other’s beliefs, but because they each hold different understandings of what feminism means, they are unable to reach a conclusion.

With these complications in mind, I decided to start my seminars by asking the students to think about and then discuss firstly what feminism is, and secondly what gender is. This led to a fruitful discussion about the different understandings of feminism which inform debates. The discussion around gender was also very productive. Several of the students equated gender with biological sex, while others understood gender as a social construct. Without having this discussion and highlighting the distinctions between these two understandings of gender, the whole seminar would have been based on the concept of ‘gender’ without a general understanding of what was actually meant by it.

Rather than diving straight into analysing theories and theorists, promoting an open and inclusive discussion examining the basics led to one the most rewarding teaching experiences I have had so far.

Response:

Laura, yours is a great example of a critical debate! Ideas and images behind a name may vary a lot from person to person, and to discuss them – rather than to examine theories around them – sounds like a brilliant strategy to make the student challenge their own preconceptions. Plus, a critical debate around the definition of ‘feminism’ and ‘gender’ surely contributes to the debunking of oppressive commonplaces and encourages the students to be positive cultural actors in their communities. Your didactic experiment inspires reflection on how to make academic teaching relevant outside the classroom. Thank you for sharing this. (Eugenio Giorgianni, Music)

Thanks, Laura, this is really an interesting approach. I like the idea of structuring a seminar around student debates to such a great extent. I can see how that really improves student engagement and also how it can ensure a more personal and hopefully deeper understanding of the issues at stake. I am curious to know how you ensure equal participation from students (or whether this is an issue at all), and also to what extent this approach is helpful in teaching theoretical debates in detail. (Mads Jensen, History)

I was delighted to see that Laura’s ‘back-to-basics’ approach to teaching gender anticipates the ‘return to the study of roots’ that I advocate in my own contribution to this learning and teaching space (see ‘“Exercices étymologiques”; or, a return to the study of roots’, under ‘Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures’). 

While etymology is certainly one way of getting at the root of things, it has its limitations and can only take us so far. The English word ‘feminism’, for example, a late nineteenth-century borrowing from French, comes from ‘femme’, simply meaning wife or woman. So, at its root, we can say that feminism is about ‘women’. 

In light of recent debates in feminist circles and beyond, however, particularly in relation to non-binary gender and trans identities, what ‘woman’ means or, rather, what it means to be a ‘woman’ has come under sustained attack to the extent that (eco, post, trans, etc.) feminists themselves fiercely dispute what signification and value, if any, we should attach to the term. 

Under these circumstances, then, for the very reason that ‘woman’, as an ‘essentially contested concept’, is subject to such contestation, we need to adopt an alternative approach, which, as Adrienne Rich argues, requires: ‘Recognizing our location, having to name the ground we’re coming from, the conditions we have taken for granted’.(1)

A pedagogy rooted in feminist theory prompts us, as educators, to question the assumptions — or, as Laura so aptly describes them, the ‘definitional foundations’ — underlying our beliefs and to ask, by carefully and critically examining our own attachments to and investments in particular definitions, precisely which psychological and/or social forces are at play? 

Ultimately, because ‘self-questioning of this sort involves putting oneself at risk’(2), espousing such a philosophy of radical reflectivity and incorporating it as part of our own personal pedagogic practice can be likened to a state of voluntary uprootedness or ‘déracinement’, a potentially fraught severance from self that opens up a space for and recognizes the Other in ourselves. 

(1) Adrienne Rich, ‘Notes toward a Politics of Location’, in Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. by Reina Lewis and Sara Mills (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 29–42 (p. 34). (2) Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, 1st edn (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), p. 23.

(Dylan Sebastian Evans, Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)  

Hi Laura, thanks so much for sharing such a great example of teaching feminist theory! As you say, supposedly controversial subjects can be tricky to teach, and raise the possibility that students could be resistant to the ideas you are discussing, or that they could get into heated and counter-productive debates. I'm really impressed that you were able to keep the discussion so open and constructive, and will certainly use your idea of discussing students' own conceptions as a starting point, rather than going straight into theory that might be perceived as alienating by students. (Saskia Papadakis, Human Geography)

Response: 

Hi Laura. You have hit upon something so fundamental and important - that before even entering into such a complex and nuanced discussion, it is vital to establish key definitions and where the debaters are positioned.  The speed-dating idea is a great introduction as it adds an element  of levity to a serious topic. Investigating what do we mean by gender sets the tone  and then this can only lead to more paths to explore. For example - is feminist IR only interested in women? Enloe's claim that 'the personal is international' is a part of a broader issue that 'the personal is political' so day-to-day personal interactions correspond to wider power relations in society and international system. This makes them political.  It has implications for the usual debates that liberals, realist and constructivists have regarding the importance of international norms and military capability - these are are rendered oblique.

(1) Enlow, C. (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (p.93)

(Kish Alam, English)

The Silent Debate and Students’ Engagement (Moudwe Daga) 

Keeping students engaged and participative during seminars can be a very daunting task, especially for a junior teacher as myself. This is a situation which I continually faced with the last group of three of my seminars running on the same day. During an InStil Small Group Teaching session, I was fortunate that Fiona introduced the teaching technique called “the silent debate”. The activity consists in setting the class in small groups of 2-3 students and each group is tasked to reflect on a question involving the participants to take a personal stance. As the name indicates, the students are not allowed to talk; instead they are invited to take turns in writing down their comments, with the next commentator challenging the statement of the previous commentator, so on and so forth. 

When I heard of that technique, I recommended it to my course convenor who did not know about it himself and was eager to give it a try in our following seminar exercises. This experience substantially enhanced the quality of my students’ interactions in my last seminar group. For the less talkative, the exercise gave them an opportunity to express themselves simply by reading out loud what they had written. For the less opinionated, it gave them more space to think through an issue before choosing a position. My position as a teacher had also improved as I moved from an initial position bias assuming that the students were not engaging because they were not reading the course materials. In the end, I realized that if I have a quiet class it was simply because the teaching techniques which I was using did not suit the personalities of the students involved. As a matter of fact, with the course convenor and fellow tutors we had to change the design of our seminars every week. Adaptation, isn’t that a common challenge facing teachers in a diverse educational environment?

Response:

Hi Daga, thank you very much for sharing your experience. In my group discussions, I usually employ ‘think&share’, ‘note-taker/spokesperson’ and ‘discussion/persuasion’ methods. I always find the ‘silent debate’ method very interesting but also rather restricting as it requires a binary question, i.e. the positives and negatives of a certain matter. How did you incorporate this method into theoretical discussions? Could you please give an example of a question that your students have discussed? (Gozde Hussain, Politics & International Relations) 

Hi Moudwe, this sounds like a really good idea. In my seminars I found that certain less talkative students were more comfortable in expressing themselves in writing than in speaking. Of course, some students also need a bit more time to formulate thoughts, rather than having instant answers to the questions posed in the context of a quickfire group discussion. But the method you used also enables dialogue among the students which is a significant bonus. In response to Gozde’s point above, I would also be interested to know some examples and how you structured the task, but I imagine this method can start with a particular question and then open up onto a wider debate depending on where the students’ comments take it. (Jean-Baptiste de Vaulx, Media Arts)

Thought experiments (Gozde Hussain) 

Thought experiments are very effective ways of sparking the interests of students in the course materials and therefore promotes a deep learning approach (Ramsden, 1992). A thought experiment is a device of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things or fundamental principles (Yeates, 2004). In a thought experiment, students imagine a hypothetical situation and discuss what they would do or how the situation would look. For instance, I ask the students to imagine the state of nature where people are left to their own devices without a central authority to impose rules. Then, I would ask them to discuss the following questions: How would life look like in the state of nature? What sort of liberty or right would people have that they wouldn’t have in organised societies? Would there be moral notions such as just/unjust, or right/wrong? If so, what would be the grounds for such notions? What would be the general attitude of people towards each other? I assure the students that there is no right or wrong answer to these questions and this thought experiment would help them deeply engage with Hobbes’ point of departure. As the students answer these questions, I tell them whether Hobbes would agree or disagree with their answers. 

Another example is Nozick’s pleasure machine through which one, by connecting to the machine, can experience the greatest happiness (Nozick, 1974). I ask students whether they would like to be connected to the machine for the remainder of their lives. This thought experiment helps them understand the significance of an individual’s autonomy. I usually incorporate thought experiments into ‘think&share’ and ‘note-taker/spokesperson’ group activities. I believe these are especially useful to spark the interests of those students who are reluctant to read the course material. With these experiments, the students first form an opinion and then find out what the thinker’s arguments are in comparison to their own opinions. It was very rewarding when they began to ask me which resources they should read to learn more about the ideas and arguments discussed. I observed that many students in their assignments managed to identify and engage with the related literature, which shows that these experiments help students deeply engage with the course materials. 

References: 

Nozick, R., (1974), Anarchy, state, and utopia, (New York: Basic Books) 

Ramsden, P. (1992), Learning in Higher Education, (London: Routledge). 

Yeates, L.B., (2004), Thought Experimentation: A Cognitive Approach, Graduate Diploma in Arts (By Research) dissertation, University of New South Wales.

Response

Hi Gozde – thank you for sharing this. I found your activity an interesting, useful and stimulating method of fostering debate in the classroom, while simultaneously merging theory and practice. I’m sure this was an excellent exercise, as groups discuss these questions before applying it to the pre-seminar reading. It also provides a good method of encouraging students to apply their previous knowledge and think critically about how political theorists’ ideas might be applied in practice, and therefore the pitfalls of their philosophies too.

While in the history department we often bypass these more theoretical approaches (at least at first and second-year UG level), we can sometimes apply a ‘counter-factual’ thought experiment, i.e. ‘what would have happened if X won the election instead of Y?’ I think this is a similar activity which would also help students to critically engage with pre-seminar material while thinking about causality and contingency. This is an activity I will try and introduce to my seminars. (Adam McKie, History)

The Entrance Ticket Approach (Emmanuel Siaw) 

Getting students to read and understand voluminous books on politics and society, starting with the discovery of silver in Potósi in 1545, was a major challenge our teaching team discovered after the first few weeks of teaching. To address this problem, we introduced an entrance ticket system that required reading of the week’s material as a pre-requisite to attend seminars. Students who did not have the proof of reading were denied access to the seminars. To standardise expectations, a template was drafted and sent to them so they could fill the necessary boxes based on the reading. This template included sections such as argument, theoretical framework, empirical evidence and questions for discussion. While this was intended to get them to read, it was also meant to guide them to understanding and teasing out the tenets of the literature which would have been somewhat  difficult for them to do without such guidance. Regardless of how unpopular this sounds, about 90% of the students partook in its first rollout. In good faith, most of the students continued this reading culture since we assured them that the ‘entrance ticket approach’ would be restored if we got a hint that they had not been doing adequate readings. This approach improved students' engagement with the literature and influenced their level of participation in seminar discussions. It also helped them, in a simplified manner, to get the basics of how to understand any academic literature they read. On the other hand, it was quite a difficult thing for me to do, in terms of asking a student to leave the seminar if they had not done their required reading. At the very worst, what I did was to warn them not to repeat it. And it worked.

Response:

I believe, from direct experience, that even if unpopular, such an approach is necessary. I’ve witnessed enough times during my teaching that students show up without having done any reading at all, sometimes even flippant about it, being very disruptive and overall not contributing to the seminar. I wonder if there is a way to employ your solution pre-emptively, in order to allow email, rather than public, communication not to attend the seminar. (Domenico Galimi, Politics & International Relations)

The productive uses of hand-raising exercises in philosophy seminars (David Ventura)

Received wisdom has it that asking a seminar group “narrow” questions, such as a simple yes or no question, can lead to a stifling of debate (Andrews, 1980; Morss and Murray, 2005). This is often seen as being particularly true in the context of a discipline like philosophy, where there are seldom binary answers to anything. For example, it’s clear that there is no simple yes or no answer to the following central question in existential philosophy: “What is the nature of the human condition?” To ask students to engage with that problem simply on the basis of narrow questions would therefore be absurd. 

But while it’s clear that you couldn’t successfully run a philosophy seminar by using only these types of “narrow” questions, I do think that they can play a productive role in generating seminar discussion. Indeed, I’ve often put them to good effect in my own seminars. And from my experience, they work particularly well if, when asking a narrow question, we also request that students provide an answer to it by simply raising—or not raising—their hand. To give a concrete example: I recently had a seminar where the aim was to critically discuss Sartre’s conception of freedom. This was obviously a complex issue, but I began by asking a couple of very simple and narrow questions. I asked first that students raise their hand if they broadly agreed with Sartre’s argument for freedom. I then asked them to raise their hands if they broadly disagreed. In both cases, the narrow question I was putting to the students was the following: “Do you agree with X?” And of course, by itself, this question didn’t do much in terms of advancing the debate. 

But since I asked students to also raise their hands in response to those questions, they weren’t entirely pointless. Together, those two mechanisms actually created a space where the debate could proceed. In effect, what I now had with this simple and quick exercise was a measure of where each of my students sat in relation to the complex issue that we were supposed to be discussing. Crucially, I also acquired that measure in a way that was equally comfortable for all students, since my requests applied to all students equally and did not require, at least initially, that any one student explain or elaborate on their answer.(1) 

And from this position of roughly knowing where each student sat in relation to the topic, I actually gave myself a number of possibilities for generating discussion. Knowing that student X (who had initially raised their hand) at the very least sympathised with Sartre’s argument for freedom, I was able to ask them a couple of follow-up questions on their position. Also knowing that student Y (who initially left their hand down, but subsequently raised it) was not of the same view, I not only asked them to explain their position, but also encouraged them to briefly respond to what student X had to say. Later, I also probed another student, Z, on why they had decided not to raise their hand at all, only to find that the reason why they hadn’t done so was because they were unclear on a particular point—a point that I then proceeded to explain to the benefit of the entire group. Overall, I thought this was quite a fruitful way of starting the seminar. 

Contrary to received wisdom, then, I think that narrow questions, when they are used in conjunction with hand-raising exercises, can actually be quite productive in generating discussion in seminars. By using these techniques in tandem, we can not only begin to get students to articulate their views on much wider issues, but we can also create ways for them to productively engage with those issues in conversation with their peers. 

(1) According to a study carried out by the Harvard Business School, these hand-raising exercises can also be a productive way of tackling gender-related participation inequities in an educational setting (Kantor, 2013; Ricket, 2013).

References 

Andrews, John (1980), “The verbal structure of teacher questions: its impact on class discussion”, POD Quarterly: The Journal of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, Vol. 32, 129-163. 

Kantor, Jodi (2013), “Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity”, The New York Times, 8 September 2013. 

Morss, Kate and Murray, Rowena (2005), Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers (London, Sage Publications). 

Ricket, Allison (2013), “Put your hand up: hand-raising workshops combat participation inequity”, Teaching Tolerance Magazine, available online at: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/put-your-hand-up (last accessed, 17 January 2019).

Response:

I agree that voting/show of hands is an easy yet fruitful way to get a first impression of where students stand on a certain issue and continue to construct the seminar based on that knowledge. Especially its inclusiveness of all and the potential benefits of undecisive students like student Z for the entire class seem to me to be great advantages. There may of course be biases in non-anonymous voting like raising hands: students may, for instance, simply follow the majority. But I do not think that forms a problem as long as the voting/raising hands forms a first step toward further questions and group exchange of opinions. Hand-raising exercises are of course equally relevant to and productive for seminars in other disciplines including my own. (Dies van der Linde, Classics)

RealPolitics: teaching critical thinking and referencing against misinformation and fake news (Domenico Galimi) 

Ever since the Brexit referendum campaign and the well-acknowledged presence of lies and misinformation (National Literacy Trust, 2018), I have tried to emphasise, in my teaching, the importance of critical thinking skills, by providing alternative, but well-grounded, interpretations of events from different angles (such as the legal one; Brookfield, 2005) and stimulating them to investigate the prime movers of events, inspired by Marcus Aurelius’ writing in his Meditations; to look for the essence of matters, peeling away bias (if possible). 

Teaching Politics, and related topics, can be a tricky activity, even more so when the fruitful moment of discussion comes (Brookfield & Preskill, 1999), but that is the moment ‘of truth’ so to speak: some students tend to shy away from topics, but are more than happy to open up once the group starts discussing, even more so if the discussion starts ‘carrying itself’ – and I tend to minimise my interventions, which leads to vivacious and engaged discussions, even on (relatively) prickly topics (such as “rape as a war weapon”) . 

The post-2016 diffusion of fake news and misinformation also puts correct referencing in an entirely new light. Even if today referencing isn’t as persuasive as it was in the past (Gilbert, 1977), in an era where everyone is granted somehow the same authority as a scholar by the vast majority of readers (National Literacy Trust, 2018), I tend to emphasise the importance of referencing not just because plagiarism is an academic offence, but as a way to stimulate my students to truly understand the topics they approach. However, I fear that this may not be sufficient, and I believe that such skills should be taught, ideally, at GCSE level, considering that only 2% of students is able to detect fake news successfully (National Literacy Trust, 2018). 

References

Nigel Gilbert, G. (1977). Referencing as persuasion. Social studies of science, 7(1), 113-122. 

National Literacy Trust (2018). Fake news and critical literacy. House of Commons. 

Brookfield, S. D., & Preskill, S. (1999). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and techniques for democratic classrooms. OUP. 

Brookfield, S. D. (2005). Teaching Critically. 352-375. In The power of critical theory : liberating adult learning and teaching. OUP.

Response:

Dear Domenici, thank you for your post. Fake news and hoaxes are indeed a problem when many people are using social media or Whats App to read the news. It does not only seem to be limited to Britain and Brexit, even in my area of research, fake news did increase exponentially in the time leading up to the presidential elections.

Besides having discussions in class it might be a good idea to do some practical exercises to teach the students to recognize fake news. How about first having a discussion in class about several ways in which fake news is made, with examples (for example taking a picture from another source and making a new story, designing fake news fully, content that doesn’t fit with the original, content that is actually a parody)? An accompanying activity that I can think of is to divide the students in groups and ask them to make 2 short news stories; one real and one fake and have these e-mailed. In the next class you could put all short news stories together and students (in their groups) should decide which ones are fake and which ones are real. In a class discussion, you could talk about ways how to check if they’re real or not, such as reverse image search and checking references.

In my experience, when you ask students to make new content or ask them to ‘solve’ things, the teaching is usually sustained longer than when it’s only discussed in class. See also: Ashwin, P ea, Reflective teaching in higher education, 2015 and Brown, P.C. and H.L. Roediger, Make it stick; the science of succesfull learning, 2014 (Sietske Rijpkema, Drama)

Using Quick Games to Increase Group Energy and Participation (Naomi Grotenhuis)

There are several different games I like to play, because they get the students up and moving about. The first, which I think is most easily adapted to stay somewhat relevant to the topic you are teaching, is known to me as “The Smartest Person in the Universe”. It sounds quite complex, but actually works quite simply. It is played over several rounds, and thus takes a little long if you have a lot of students, but on days where - for some reason - class attendance is quite poor (or if   you are teaching a very small group) it works quite well. The students (and you too, if you like, I prefer to participate) make a circle. The size of the circle determines how hard the game is, the larger the circle the easier the game and thus a small circle speeds up the game. You (or one of the students) name(s) a category for that round, for example in an International Relations class you could start with capitals, world leaders etc; or in Philosophy you could start with philosophers. It is quite useful to try to come up with several categories that are relevant to your subject, if you want to stay on topic. When it is your turn, you will need to name an example of the category that no one else has named so far. The thing that is the trickiest to work out is the walking part. Your turn is determined by someone else making eye contact with you and walking towards you after they have named their example. Let’s say it is the turn of person A. They say Paris, in the category capitals, and make eye contact with person B across from them. They can then start walking towards person B, who has until person A reaches them to come up with their own answer (Kuala Lumpur) and start walking towards someone else in the circle, say person C. Who then gives their answer etc. until either, one person reaches another without that person coming up with an answer or until someone says an example that has already been used by anyone else. When a person reaches another's position they will take their place, keeping a continuously moving circle. Once a person is tagged out a new category is chosen and the person who tagged the last one out can start the next round. Once there are two left you can either play splat (say random things until you give an example of a pre-determined category, the first one to turn and “shoot” the other wins) or you could make some type of quiz more relevant to your class (but this would need to be done in advance) the winner of which is the Smartest Person in the Universe and wins. This game can also be played in the first class with the names of the students (so each student needs to call out the name of the person they are walking towards in the first couple of rounds, until the students know the names so well that it takes too long for someone to be tagged out), as a get to know you game.

Utilising the “against the grain” method for political science (Edmilson Angelo)

With the introduction of Politics Outside the West as a new module for second year PIR students it was always going to be a challenge to teach and learn political, social and economic matters regarding the global south due to the amount of misinformation on the developing world. As a strategy to create critical thinking and instil the insider/outsider analysis approach to the students, I used the “against the grain” method for readings, documentaries, videos, articles and discussions which made students always go beyond what they read, listened or watched and ask the Whys and Hows behind a particular material. The “against the grain” method allows students to scrutinize the beliefs and attitudes that typically go unexamined in a text, videos, documentary and even in someone’s option in class, drawing attention to the gaps, silences and contradictions. This was an innovation to me that worked perfectly with the various topics covered in the course. As I had a diverse group of students from various countries, this proved crucial as students developed skills to not only accept and understand reasons behind someone else’s opinion, but also question and find gaps and contradictions which was excellent for the class discussions and learning process overall. Moreover, this was also noticeable in their work in the way they critically explored the material they had and produced amazing critical thinking. The “against the grain” method challenges students to produce alternative perspectives and allows them to try on other people’s eyes and learn to read and understand things with an awareness of power which mitigates biasness.

Response

Dear Edmilson, Thank you for your post. I think this sounds like a really interesting method which takes advantage of the often diverse group of student backgrounds which you would find in a University setting. It invites students to disagree with one another in a relaxed way and without pressure. My tutorial on Crimes of the Powerful should be able to take advantage of your idea, as I am constantly trying to get students to think critically about Capitalism, government and everything else they are familiar with! Thanks again, Khadijah Na'eem

International Relations beyond Trump (Andrew Lo)

US President Donald Trump has been in the limelight since his presidency. While his winning of the presidential election was surprising to many political scientists, he and his policies were heavily discussed in international relations courses. Meanwhile, it is equally important to cover different parts of the world in the whole course. This is achieved in several ways. 

First and foremost, international students facilitate the internationalisation of the curriculum and the intercultural learning of local students (Sawir, 2013). International students always bring us different perspectives in seminar discussions and their contribution to local knowledge enrich our application of IR theories in different geopolitical settings. Of course, this may also lead to language and cultural barriers in classrooms which draws my attention. Sometimes, I would need to provide some guidance or background information, and even ask the student to explain more, as students’ understanding of world events and history varied.

Second, it is wise to adopt a more multicultural perspective in teaching international politics. I tend to draw a wider spectrum of news, cases and examples from different reliable sources to prepare a more flexible and balanced class. Not to mention an instructor’s experience and worldview may affect his/her teaching practice (Bertrand and Lee, 2012). Nowadays, this is more common in a globalised university. Hence, it is essential to let students know that there appears to be a core part of IR theories and potential Western/American biases, i.e. to introduce views from an academic perspective but not to indoctrinate students with a particular idea. 

Therefore, input from both teachers and students is equally important in maintaining a pluralist and inclusive learning environment in IR classrooms, especially on more globalised and controversial political issues.

References:

Erlenawati Sawir (2013). Internationalisation of higher education curriculum: the contribution of international students. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11:3, 359-378.

Julia Lau Bertrand and Ji-Young Lee (2012). Teaching International Relations to a Multicultural Classroom. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 24:1, 128-133.

Response:

Dear Andrew, thank you for your post. It is indeed important for teachers and students to maintain a pluralist and inclusive learning environment in International Relations, and even beyond that as we live in a world where a problem for one, becomes a problem for all. Multiculturism perspective was a key instrument in my teaching experience with the very diverse group I had for Politics Outside the West. Great post, thank you. (Edmilson Angelo, PIR)

Hi, your adoption of a multicultural perspective in teaching is not just exciting but the right path in this day and age. Mr Trump is a divisive and shrewd politician; his rhetorics in the wake of the recent killings in the US points to his 'patriotic' stance. Apart from 'IR beyond Trump', an interesting path to look into is the idea of 'Global IR' by Prof Acharya (see Acharya & Buzan, 2019) or visit https://www.e-ir.info/pdf/71943

Nice post. (Anon, PIR)

Theory in Word Clouds (Gleice Miranda) 

There are several things to bear in mind when teaching International Relations theory, such as theoretical focus, student’s level and background, and the old theory-practice debate. Not all students know the same things; they often form a multicultural group; and pure theory can be intimidating, or worse, boring. “Flexible but insistent” became my main stance when teaching, because I did not want to throw theoretical concepts and aspects at them nor spoon-feed my students, but develop their critical thinking and their ability to translate and reflect all those words into the real political world we have. Although I do not think theory courses should be avoided in favour of applied studies as William Wallace (1996) believes, I understand there should be a balance between theory and practice to better analyse reality. 

As a result, I tried to develop tasks and activities that would require students to read or research beforehand. One of the tasks I brought to class was the creation of a word cloud. I requested each of my students to send me by email two or three words they linked to Post-Colonialism until the day before our seminar. The first time I did this, I had to send them at least three emails as a reminder. Sometimes, as teachers, we have to insist until something becomes a good habit or even second nature to our students. After receiving the words, I compiled them into a word cloud, with the name of the theory larger and in the middle to be easily identifiable. During the class, I asked them to divide themselves in small groups and select two words that they believed reflected the theory and one word they thought might be displaced. After, each small group had to explain to the whole class the words they had chosen and why they were linked (or not) to the theory. One of the things I found most interesting was that one group’s “displaced” word was another’s “fitting”. This created a good debate between the students, making the activity more critical and dynamic. 

I waited a couple seminars before bringing the activity again. This time, I went a bit further, asking them to (1) select fitting and displaced words and (2) link them in a coherent way to explain one or more concepts and factors related to the theory in question. It took some of them more time, and pushing from me, to do it - especially the ones that had not attended the lecture. However, most of them did it without trouble and seemed to understand better the theory after the group discussion. As a next step, I brought the case studies that I wanted them to analyse, and the word cloud served as a guide to some of them. It was a complex theory (Frankfurt School), which required the students to think beyond states as international actors, but critically examine the whole international community as an order built by humankind, flawed and full of prejudice. The word cloud, with both simple and complex terms, helped them have a good basis for productive engagement and discussion among themselves, especially because it gave the students equal footing to make their own arguments. 

I did not have the chance to bring this activity again, but I intend on doing so this next academic year. I have been planning to add a third step to the activity: by the end of the class, I want to use a digital aid, such as mentimeter, to let them build their own new – and anonymous – word cloud. I believe it will serve as good feedback for me, because I will know what they have understood from the seminar; and for them, once they will be able critically input their own ideas into the cloud after the discussion and (maybe) use it as a revision device while studying for exams. 

References 

Wallace, William (1996) Truth and Power; Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations. Review of International Studies 22(4), 301-21.

Response:

Dear Gleice, many thanks for sharing about your word clouds approach. It sounds like a very effective technique to guide students towards theory and topics they would otherwise find uninteresting. Besides, I think it could be applicable for social sciences, arts and humanities in general. I also reflected on your on your teaching's main stance "Flexible, but insistent", and I believe it combines the right balance between not pushing the students into debates they feel they are being forced, but instead just setting a way of making them realise that the topics to be discussed are exciting and interesting by making them protagonists of the talk. In this way, it also seems that practice and theory are brought together. In my experience as a teaching assistant for the course Introduction to World Musics which is offered for undergraduate students, I have also noticed the importance of suggesting activities that interweave theory with the exercise of listening. Most of the time, I could perceive students engaging with the musics they listened to. However, it was more challenging to get them to discuss the concepts and authors suggested in the bibliography, even when the topics were closely connected to the music. Therefore, your idea of working around word clouds as part of a listening exercise, could potentially be very effective as a connective thread in this activity, i.e, requesting words they can relate to the sounds they listened to. It would encourage students to find their own ways around the theory, connecting them to songs, and eventually, analysing these songs beyond its musical aspects only, and reflecting on them more widely as cultural practices from a community.  I wish you all the success in implementing a third step to the word clouds and I appreciate having learnt from it. (Romy Martinez, Music Department).

Comparative Thought Experiments (Thomas Waterton, Philosophy)

Gözde Hussain has already introduced the idea of thought experiments in philosophy (see her post in the ‘Politics and International Relations’ section), so here I will discuss an exercise I used to teach students how to engage critically with the thought experiments we study. In this class we were studying the question “Do Computers Think?”, a particularly thought-experiment-heavy topic in the philosophy of mind. My goal was to get the students to adjust and compare different thought experiments—to realise that they were entitled to experiment with them, and to see what happened if they adjusted them, rather than simply to accept them as pre-made. This was inspired by philosopher Daniel Dennett’s own writing about thought experiments and pedagogy (Dennett 2007, 15; cf. Hofstadter 1981, 375ff.). 

The first exercise involved dividing the class into four groups, each of 3-4 students. I provided the same handout to every student: it showed four different thought experiments. Some came from relevant academic literature, and some were summaries of popular science-fiction stories (for example, the film Her). I explained to the students that I had included examples from pop culture because they are welcome to introduce any philosophically interesting examples they come across or think up, so long as they are relevant. I then set each group the task of reading one of the four examples and answering a series of questions about it, concluding with: ‘Can this computer think?’ 

Following the small-group exercises, I asked each group to summarise their thought experiment and explain the answers they had come to. I then invited questions and reactions from the other students. As I had expected, many students brought up their reactions to the example their group had studied in response to the questions about other students’ exercises. When this happened, I encouraged students to think comparatively: if the other exercise had had this characteristic, would your response to it have been different? Before long, students were making these comparisons and adjustments spontaneously, modifying thought experiments to work out what the sources of their intuitions were. 

Dennett, Daniel. 2007. ‘What RoboMary Knows.’ In Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism (Alter and Walker eds.), 15-31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171655.001.0001 

Hofstadter, Douglas. 1981. ‘Reflections on Searle.’ In The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (Dennett and Hofstadter eds.), 373-382. New York: Basic Books.

Teaching Learning (Sam Matthews, Philosophy)

During my time teaching philosophy, I have found that one of the most difficult aspects for first year students is learning what it actually means to study the subject and read philosophical texts. Initially many students seem to struggle with the density of the assigned texts and complain that the texts are set at a ‘too high level’ or are ‘very unclear’ etc. In order to help to remedy this problem, I decided to spend some time in the first seminar of the course talking about how I approach reading philosophy, i.e. teaching through so-called ‘metacognitive modelling’ (Tanner 2017). The idea is that instead of merely conveying your understanding of a particular text to students (which is ‘merely’ cognitive, i.e. aimed at conveying information), you explain what you did to arrive at the understanding that you have (Livingstone 2003, 3). The thought is that by giving an account of your own practice you can help students “learn to think like [philosophers]” and so improve their ability to succeed in the subject (Tanner 2017). 

To this end, I created a handout called ‘The Art of Reading Philosophy’ where I gave some hints and tips for reading philosophical texts. Chief among these was the suggestion that they read the texts slowly (I illustrated this via a quote from Wittgenstein: “Sometimes a sentence can only be understood if it is read at the right tempo. My sentences are all supposed to be read  slowly” (Wittgenstein, 1980, 57)). I think that in many cases first year students are used to a far simpler and clearer writing style than most philosophers are able to manage, and so they tend not to allot enough time for reading the texts. I asked students to compare how I described my approach to reading the text to how they had approached it. Many admitted that they had spent very little time reading the text and thought that this likely contributed to their difficulty in understanding the argument being made. 

Bibliography 

Livingston, J (2003): ‘Metacognition an Overview’ [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED474273] [Accessed 2/7/19] 

Tanner, K (2017): ‘Promoting Student Metacognition’, in CBE – Life Sciences Education, Vol. 11 (2). [https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033] [Accessed 2/7/19] 

Wittgenstein, L (1980): Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL) 

‘Would Kant have said that?’: Teaching Philosophy Texts (anon.)

An activity I tried out this year with students in my Kant (metaphysics/epistemology) class worked quite well. This is quite technical and is not something a lot of the students are initially interested in, so I wanted to add something a bit more fun to the seminars. The activity took a sort of pub-quiz format as a competitive team game in groups of four students: “Kant or not-Kant”. For the questions, I handed around a series of quotations. For each round/question, a student would read the quotation. Then all the teams would have to discuss whether they thought this was a Kant quotation or not and write down their answer. The goal was to encourage them to try to use their existing knowledge to work out what Kant might have said. To be honest, I initially felt a bit silly introducing this task but was quickly surprised by how involved the students were and how they used their existing knowledge to try to work out what was likely a genuine quotation reflecting something that might be consistent with Kant’s views, and which just used similar jargon (e.g. a priori), but in a different way. The competitive team aspect meant that students discussed with their team-members likely possibilities, had to persuade each other which answer they thought was correct, which promoted in-group discussion and evaluation.

The Right to Choose, Improving Classroom Productivity (anon.)  

Conventional wisdom has it that teaching, and learning aims to improve students to become better individuals for themselves and their communities. My teaching philosophy stems from constructivism, as such, individuals are unique, and everyone understands and interpret realities from their perspectives. Thus, I thought of having a teaching style that will increase classroom productivity. The technique entails giving students the opportunity at the beginning of each teaching session to choose from two different lessons prepared from the same topic. The students could see the front pages of each slide and determine which slide should be used to teach for the day. For instance, during a microteaching session, I prepared a lesson on climate change (tweaked it into two different lesson slides of about 17 ppt pages each). Slide A had the image of Greta Thunberg while slide B had collaged images of a flooded area and desert environment. Both had the same title as well as teaching aims and objectives; yet, the slides entranced different reactions from the students. The students had a minute to discuss and vote; slide A won.

Consequently, students’ participation increased because the students felt to be part of the decision-making process; they were active, engaged, and attentive until the end of the class. The downside may be the extra time needed to tweak the slides. This teaching style was inspired by Bodner (1986) and Ruhl (2015). According to Ruhl (2015), collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity are fundamental skills for students. 

References:

Bodner, G.M.  (1986) 'Constructivism: A theory of knowledge', Journal of chemical education, 63(10), 873-878.

Ruhl J. (2015) Teaching Methods for Inspiring the Students of the Future [online]. TEDx Talks. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFg9bcW7Bk [Accessed 13 May 2020].

Responses:

This is a really interesting idea! It appears to be effective in improving class engagement and participation. This has given me motivation to try something similar with my students, so they feel more involved with in the learning process. (Gemma Rides - Psychology)

Operationalizing ‘cuteness’: teaching measurement of concepts in Political Science (Zhamilya Mukasheva, Public Policy)

In one of the Research Methods in Politics classes this year, I asked students to come up with operationalization of ‘cute’ content on social media. The exercise prompt read that the group of students works in a political consulting firm tasked with finding out how using ‘cute’ content on social media affects the electoral success of candidates. Besides operationalizing what ‘cuteness’ is, students were also tasked with defining the variables measuring ‘cuteness’ for the content analysis of tweets. As an example, I presented a variable called “Hedgehogs” which is coded as 1 if a tweet includes photos or mentions of hedgehogs and 0 if it does not include hedgehogs or the hedgehog is threatening or ‘scary’.

Though this exercise was quite bizarre, it served several purposes. First, it helped students to understand the process of operationalizing concepts, from the abstract definition to the very specific measurement, which is an important building block of the actual research process. Further, I intended for students to see how the resulting definitions and variables in different groups were different, and that is why describing the exact operationalizations of concepts is so important for research reports. Finally, as the exercise was set up in a fictional research firm environment, I hoped that it showed the usage of research methods in the work context, as a way of implementing the situated learning approach to my teaching (Lave and Wenger, 1991). This exercise is akin to tasks on examining social media content I encountered while working as a researcher in a social research firm (though, of course, these tasks were never focused on ‘cuteness’).

I believe that this exercise served its purpose quite well, as I felt that the students were engaged and came up with quite thought-out operationalizations of ‘cuteness’ and very specific variables. If I were to attempt this exercise next time, I would like to allocate more time for it. In some groups, students did not have enough time to finish the exercise, whereas, in others, there was very little time for summarizing the exercise and what the students were supposed to learn from it.

References:

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press.

An idea for a seminar plan in Philosophy of Time (Kynthia Plagianou, Philosophy)

I prepared the following plan for the Micro-Teach simulation class, but I hope to develop it into an extended tutorial for undergraduate philosophy students in the future. The broader aim will be to examine a series of specific examples taken from the history of art and to study the kind of relations they enter into with specific philosophical concepts. The following first draft takes on philosophical conceptions of time and its relationship with painting. 

A group of students are studying time and temporality in the history of philosophy. In this particular plan, we will discuss Gilles Deleuze's conception of time aligned with the notion of 'imaging' in painting. According to Deleuze, painting and visual arts, in general, can expose us to the temporal structure that allows for an experience of movement and change (Deleuze, Cinema II, 2013, p. xi). At this point, following the excellent study by Kamini Vellodi on the Venetian painter Jacobo Tintoretto (Vellodi, 2019), I will expose the students to a select few of Tintoretto’s paintings. In these paintings, an observer can perceive relations of time beyond the familiar representation of linear temporality in the service of the pictorial narrative. What sounds like an abstract construct is then experienced visually and so translates into a concrete experience. 

Regarding the aims and outcomes of this plan, they can include one or more of the following points, depending on the general objective of the broader tutorial:

1. Expose students to philosophical content; namely, introduce them to a specific conception of time, and the contiguous concepts of 'image' and 'representation' along the lines of Deleuze's philosophy. 

2. Encourage students to become acquainted with the history of art, and to acquire the means to intensify their experience of artworks.

3. More importantly, the students will have the opportunity to examine problems at the junction between art and philosophy.

References

• Deleuze, G., Cinema II, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

• Vellodi, K., Tintoretto's Difference: Deleuze, Diagrammatics and Art History, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Delivering Research Methods with Penguins (Tom Barton, Politics and International Relations)

It is common within social sciences that many students do not have a strong quantitative (mathematical) background. There is often a gap between assumed knowledge from teachers and the actual knowledge students enter the classroom with. This can be exacerbated when new content is delivered as it can be taught in abstract terms or with examples that students are not interested in. Therefore, to improve the quality of the delivery of this content I delivered this content through the form of penguins. 

The series of classes focussed on regression where we are interested in one thing causing/ changing another.  Using pollical examples whilst relevant to their wider degree can often over complicate the teaching of methods. Students have strong political knowledge  where they have an understanding of how multiple factors could effect an outcome. This is good knowledge to have for later development. However, when we just want to teach basic concepts it can over-complicate. 

Therefore, I used examples which were not related to their degree at all. I first come across this technique in my own learning. I described a scenario where you are a zoo keeper (political scientist) and you want to understand how to grow taller penguins. You find in discussions with others (reading the literature) that changing the penguins diet from one food to another may cause a change in height (theory building). Therefore, you implement a change in diet and see how this relates to a penguins change in height (regression). 

This fun  and simple example allowed students to grasp they key concepts first before applying them to political contexts. 

In future I also aim to develop this scenario further as part of the module also teaches them coding, which again many haven't done before. 

Response:

Hi Tom! I find this idea really helpful and interesting! Having been the student with a weak mathematical background myself, I have often felt nervous in quantitative modules and I would have really appreciated the intuitive and light-hearted examples you provide. I remember the frustration of a module convenor choosing quite obscure and technical examples to explain important concepts: this left us students not only as confused as before, but also feeling stupid and inadequate. I will remember your suggestion as a reminder for my own teaching: I have students attending my module from a variety of undergraduate courses and it's often easy to take for granted their knowledge of specific language and concepts. In my future teaching experiences, I will be mindful of offering intuitive, generic, and possibly fun examples to make sure everyone in the classroom is on the same level of understanding.
Lucia Frigo (International Relations, May 2023)

Teaching Contested Topics Effectively [Arvind Kumar, Politics & International Relations]  

I, as a teacher of Political Science have to often teach topics which are deeply contested such as affirmative action policy, terrorism, same sex marriage etc. Teaching such topics effectively becomes a herculean task since students enter the classroom with some previous knowledge which they gain from their family, friends, and experience. Their previous knowledge often makes them form a priori judgement about what is right and what is wrong; and hence posing a serious challenge before the teacher to make them correct their judgement. Previous knowledge which is considered to play the most important role in learning, acts here as an obstacle in promoting effective learning.

       In this term, I had to teach the affirmative action policy of India to the students who had opted for a course on the Politics of South Asia. Since many students were from India and some students were also from the Indian diaspora, they had prior knowledge and also judgement about the topic. I adopted two methods- providing surface learning through my lecture and promoting deep learning through seminar. I provided a descriptive history of affirmative action policy incorporating philosophical and theoretical arguments which are in favour and against this policy. Then, I also introduced empirical research which has been carried out to test such arguments and counter arguments against this policy. During the lecture, students seem to have felt that their point of view was incorporated since I discussed both sides of the argument. During the seminar, I moved towards promoting deep learning which I did through case studies. I gave case studies asking students to solve them individually, and then discuss their solutions in smaller groups and convince their colleagues about their point of view, and finally share in the whole classroom. I also asked members of other groups to provide counter arguments. To do those exercises, I used both pictures and movies to promote deep learning. I noticed that gradually students were able to learn inconsistency in their own argument and agreed to make corrections in their previous judgement. 

Extending teaching in remote (Emerging Economy) Settings. (John Tull PIR - March 2023)

Effective case study-based learning in steps can reflect evolving situations and enable discovery of new information/decisions through students asking appropriate questions/using appropriate tools (Dunne and Brooks, 2004). For these aims, communicative tools like PowerPoint and Excel, even with individual/group exercises and mini-presentations, are too static for compelling narrative. 

I aim to create a new experience in guiding students through complex material and scenarios, by integrating "content, pedagogy, and technology, plus the relationships among and between them" (Koehler and Mishra 2009) for my specific purpose. I start by negotiating the pedagogical aims with the remotely-located participants: they want learning on specific, unfamiliar topics; and they want opportunities to learn the practice of applying that knowledge, not just book learning. Internet connections in emerging economies tend to be unstable; resources/content need to be accessible asynchronously, in lively ways that stimulate group-based learning. 

My learning goals are (i) to provide engaging content that complements written and verbal material; that (ii) fosters decision-making and experimentation with business tools, and (iii) accessible/replayable whenever possible/as often as needed. This allows me to focus on e.g. struggling students, and to alternate between setting individual or group-based breakout exercises, using any media they prefer.

Based on some initial, small-group trials, Videoscribe seems to provide an easy platform for creating professional-quality whiteboarding animations. This meets two main purposes: (i) a series of vignette whiteboarded animations can reveal the case scenario, with increasing complexity, in stages and in more vivid ways; and (ii) both instructor and student can graphically explain key concepts -- the students can adopt the tool to present their case analyses and findings in an active, narrative-oriented learning mode.

I selected this technology strategy over alternatives for two main reasons. First, I rejected dedicated Video technology as (i) I have limited production time/skill, and (ii) rather than produce poor videos I'd rather enable student participation. Videoscribe also seems potentially suitable for students to create brief videos for class outputs. Second, full-blown animation apps were too difficult to learn to navigate, or had limited image libraries. Ease of use will be important, so I can efficiently develop vivid conceptual explanations and nuanced scenario-building that engages students. The learning curve is moderate but still a factor, however; your experiences with any such creative tool would be most welcome!

References:

Dunne, David, and Kim Brooks. Teaching with cases. Guelph, ON: STLHE, 2004.

Koehler, Matthew, and Punya Mishra. "What is technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK)?." Contemporary issues in technology and teacher education 9.1 (2009): 60-70.

Using student presentations and peer assessments to bring theory into lived experiences (Aine Bennett, PIR, May 2023)

During the final year of my undergraduate degree, I took a module on Marxism and Psychoanalysis, which continues to be very influential for me both in terms of my understanding of various theories that influence my research work today and, I have come to realise during my first year of teaching, of what good teaching is.

One of the regular activities in the class that was particularly effective handed a lot of creative control to the students. Each week, 2 students would have to write a “think piece” on how the reading applied to something they were interested in and give a presentation on an application of another aspect of the reading. The written work would then be uploaded online, and other students would provide written feedback. This regular peer assessment provided students with an opportunity to learn from their peers’ writing, as well as to regularly critically reflect on what good writing meant to them, and thereby improve their own.

The student presentations have proved even more memorable and were effective at bringing theory to life. I would suggest that this is the result of the free choice of topics, as students could talk about anything that related to the theory discussed in the readings. A high bar was set in the first week by one student who turned the class into an assembly line for bags of sweets to explain the concept of alienation from labour which established a supportive and engaged environment. This led to some highly personal presentations on topics such as table-top role-playing games, multi-level marketing schemes, and precarious gig work. These developed student understanding of dense and dry theoretical texts and set the stage for informed and lively classroom discussions.

I think this approach was particularly suited to the environment of a final year, optional module with 3-hour seminars, as it is time-consuming and requires a high level of student engagement. That said, I think student participation in designing classroom activities can be productive at various stages and is especially well-suited to teaching politics which should be helping students to better understand the world around them and how we relate to each other.

A study trip for undergraduate students as an opportunity for student-led learning  (Lucia Frigo, International Relations, May 2023)

When I was asked to attend a two-day study trip to Brussels organised for 30 undergraduate students, I was quite nervous and unsure of what to expect. The study trip had been organised and partly funded by the Jean Monnet Chair of Royal Holloway’s Politics and International Relations department, and was open to second-  and third-year students of the European Union Politics and International Organizations modules. I have been a seminar convenor for the latter module for the whole academic year, so I took the study trip as an opportunity for the students’ active learning (Prince, 2004) at the end of the term, in a way that summarised and concretised the module’s topics. 

Three are the key takeaways I have from this experience. Firstly, the mere prospect of a study trip at the end of term engaged the students to be more involved in their learning process: they would often ask additional questions such as the institutions’ organigram, daily operations, and current agendas. I welcomed these deviations from the seminar’s activities and, when possible, integrated them with my own plan for the session. The students enjoyed having an impact on their curriculum, and they arrived on the trip extremely prepared and motivated. 

Secondly, during the trip, I saw the students truly take ownership of their learning process. They were keen on asking questions to the various speakers, and they would discuss the various visits without needing to be prompted. I appreciated the students’ articulated and critical reflections on the activities they had partaken in, and I was happy to be a mere spectator in their discussion, besides offering resources and guidance when asked. This appears in line with other studies on study trips in higher education (Pattacini, 2018; Alon and Tal, 2015).

Thirdly and finally, this opportunity reminded me of how important it is to create opportunities in our curricula for the students to experience what they’re learning on paper, for them to have time to reflect on them, and for a safe space to express their own opinions and feelings about what they just lived. A student lit up in front of the European Parliament and told me “Here we are at my future workplace”, while another was amazed that one of our speakers (a high-level officer) was from their own native country and was a Royal Holloway alumn. I believe that, while they might not retain all the knowledge from the module, these experiences will remain in their memory for much longer.

References:

Alon, N. A. & Tal, T. (2015) Student Self-Reported Learning Outcomes of Field Trips: The pedagogical impact, International Journal of Science Education, 37:8, 1279-1298,

Pattacini, L. (2018). Experiential Learning: the field study trip, a student-centred curriculum. Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 11(2).

Prince, M. (2004) ‘Does active learning work? A review of the research.’ Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x