Government

In this activity, students create concept maps showing how various Indian institutions relate to and constrain each other. Below is a description of how to prime the students for the activity followed by the actual steps of the activity. In The Politics...

Are people predisposed to favor their own groups at the expense of others, even when the group distinction is completely arbitrary? This activity replicates, more or less, the exact experiment used by Henri Tajfel to demonstrate the "minimal group...

There has been an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease. Which policy is best based on the scientific estimations of how many people will be saved? This activity uses this example with poll everywhere (polleverywhere.com) technology to demonstrate framing...

This worksheet provides scaffolding as students practice new methods concepts. It has students use the statistical software SPSS and scaffolding like sentence frames and graphic organizers to learn about scatterplots, correlation and linear regression...

These lectures on theories, game theory, and measurement provide an interactive way to teach concepts. The attached power points use concept maps, graphic organizers, and fill-in-the-blanks to make teaching political science methods more interactive and...

Students' own survey data can provide instructors an engaging, accessible tool for teaching students methods concepts. At the beginning of the semester, students took a survey that asked a variety of mundane and absurd questions. The data from the survey...

Assigned debates work well for weeks where several competing theoretical approaches are covered. This debate involves competing theories on approaches to explaining political attitudes. The steps for the assigned debate are as follows: - The section...

This group discussion format can be used in a week that covers several big concepts, each of which can be discussed along a similar ("parallel") sequence of discussion questions. The concepts in this particular class are: Wisdom of crowds, Heuristic...

Is it better to cooperate or defect? In this game, students participate in a real life prisoner's dilemma game. Each student has a partner and a red and black playing card to indicate which of two choices the student prefers. Each choice corresponds to a...

This activity, created by Justin Gest, involves learning through "speed dating." The activity focuses on how to craft excellent topic sentences while considering the application of the course's theoretical ideas. Justin has done this activity for several...