Although most instructors care deeply about student writing, they often give little attention to the part of the writing process over which they maintain complete control: the assignment itself. Yet, the written prompt that we distribute is often where student confusion (and confused writing) begins. Using Bloom's taxonomy as inspiration, we off er instructors a typology directly linked to course objectives, which we believe can be readily understood by student writers. aculty members care deeply about student writing and turn a critical eye to their syllabus, lesson plans, and teaching style in an eff ort to improve it (Beyer, Taylor, and Gilmore 2013). However, they do not often directly examine the part of the assessment process over which they maintain complete control and on which they rarely receive feedback: the formatting of assignments. We argue that the intent, structure, and wording of a prompt all help promote or impede student learning. In response, we developed a typology of assignment objectives as well as a series of suggestions for structuring and wording prompts. We review each in turn. Allison Rank will be an assistant professor at SUNY Oswego inIn the past three decades, numerous authors have bemoaned the lowered quality of writing on college campuses. The fi rst response was the development of writing centers, with which we have personal experience: we were both directors of a social science writing center at a large public research university. 1 The observations and suggestions in this article draw on our experiences and our challenges as we began to teach our own classes and develop our own writing assignments. Serving as graduate-student directors of a political science writing center exposed us to prompts from a variety of subfi elds and course levels. This provided the opportunity to think more deeply about how the wording and structure of writing assignments had an impact on student writing.The second response to concerns about student writing was a push to develop curriculum that more fully incorporates writing into course structures. Scholars off er a number of suggestions for how to best accomplish this second goal. First, evaluation measures, including exams and longer paper assignments, should be linked directly to the overall learning objectives of the course. Rather than treating writing assignments as a way to measure content mastery, they should be conceptualized along with learning objectives. In Writing in the Academic Disciplines, David R. Russell observes that the shift to mass education and the development of specifi c disciplines created "specialized text-based discourse communities, highly embedded in the diff erentiated practices of those communities," within which "knowledge and its expression could be conceived of as separate activities" (Russell 2002, 5). Instructors' eff orts to couple "knowledge and its expression" in their courses are exemplifi ed in the course-design process at McGill University. As they begin to outline courses, instructors are encouraged to c...
part of the APSA Annual Meeting. As with previous events, this was an opportunity to gather the growing community of scholars dedicated to improving political science education. Democracy requires functioning institutions and an informed and engaged citizenry. As a community that values undergraduate education and wants to find innovative ways to better educate our students, our goal is to help them become better citizens by stressing the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and civic engagement. The organization of the day-long conference reflects this spirit. The day was divided into a series of workshops (held in the morning) and panels (during the afternoon). The panels were organized around four tracks: 1) Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom; 2) Simulations and games; 3) Civic engagement; and 4) Teaching research, writing, and information literary. Summaries of each track's discussions are provided below.The conference's theme this year was "Teaching Political Science in a Post-Pandemic Era." Our experiences in the classrooms during this past year and a half tell us that we are experiencing a new moment in undergraduate education. Students and faculty are facing new challenges related to diminishing resources, overwork, the physical and mental legacies of the pandemic, and the consequences of uneven online learning, among others. How to reconnect with our students-while we rethink and restructure our teaching in the post-pandemic era-is a central question we confront. Responding to our call for proposals, our workshops and panels approached this challenge from diverse and innovative perspectives to improve quantitative reasoning, problem-solving, critical and analytical thinking, communication skills, global/intercultural fluency, leadership and teamwork, and accessibility. All participants and presenters took care in engaging fruitfully and thoughtfully in the discussions throughout the day.The morning workshops discussed a range of issues central to the mission of teaching in a post-pandemic era, and we can only briefly note them here: how to facilitate equity and access in the classroom, the use of DiploSim in International Relations courses, how to create a safe and challenging learning environment, the role of Political Science Honor Societies in engaging students, the foundational principles of antiracist pedagogy, the design of role-playing simulations in remote and hybrid classrooms, how to engage students in local government, and how to teach experimental political science.We were extremely lucky to have Terri Givens, Professor of Political Science at McGill University, and the Founder of Brighter Professional Development, as the keynote speaker during luncheon.
This paper outlines our response to fundamental challenges confronting undergraduate political science education. While enrollments in the political science major have declined at many institutions, including our own, we believe a structured APD approach offers an opportunity to capitalize on the wave of youth activism as well as the turbulent moment in contemporary politics by framing our major as the place where students can go to learn more about how we reached this particular political moment, think about what it takes and means to make change in a thoughtful, meaningful way, and equip themselves with the tools to interpret both the rhetorical and institutional contexts in which they hope to make this change while also overcoming some of the hurdles posed by the distribution model that remains the prevalent structure of many political science undergraduate programs.
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