MEETING FORMAT

The APSA Teaching and Learning Conference uses the working-group format, which allows small groups of scholars the opportunity to interact intensively and on a sustained basis on a common theme. To facilitate this interaction, all participants attend one working group, for the duration. The conference also features special workshops that focus on practical issues related to teaching.

2013 CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

The 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference featured 14 moderated working groups/tracks organized around themes such as civic engagement; diversity, inclusiveness and equality; integrating technology into the classroom; and program assessment. There was a new workshop on distance learning, as well as an editor-led workshop featuring the new APSA publication titled Teaching Civic Engagement: From Student to Active Citizen.

More than 300 meeting presenters and discussants attended this year's meeting. The meeting participants were a diverse group of faculty and scholars. According to the post-meeting evaluation, 31% of the respondents came from BA-granting and 31% came from PhD-granting departments. Twenty-five percent of the respondents came from MA-granting departments. Ten percent reported being community college faculty, 1% high school, and 2% other. Among respondents, the breakdown by occupation or rank is as follows: 46% tenured faculty; 26% tenure track faculty; 16% contingent faculty; 1% high school faculty; and 11% other.

Participants enjoyed a number of plenary sessions: During the opening session, Jane Mansbridge, APSA President, and Kimberly Mealy, Director, Education, Professional, and Diversity Programs, provided welcoming remarks. Michael Brintnall, Executive Director of APSA, presented the Pi Sigma Alpha Keynote Address “Teaching Political Science is Not What Political Scientists Do: Learning from the Discipline.” John Ishiyama, University of North Texas, moderated the 10th Anniversary Roundtable. The roundtable was titled “The Impact of the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference.”Panelists included Michelle Deardorff, Jackson State University; Kerstin Hamann, University of Central Florida; Carlos Huerta, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi; Linda Lopez, University of Southern California; Fletcher McClellan, Elizabethtown College; and Candace Young, Truman State University.

This year also marked the second year that the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference featured a preconference short course. The 2013 short course focused on simulations and games and was led by Victor Asal of the University of Albany. The COTELCO and IDPP teams of American University, led by Derrick Cogburn provided live online coverage of a number of the tracks and plenary sessions—as was the case for the 2010, 2011, and 2012 TLC Meetings.

The meeting concluded on Sunday, February 10, with a plenary session in which the participants and track moderators shared highlights from each track such as concrete suggestions on next steps and goals aimed at enhancing teaching and learning throughout the discipline.

POST-MEETING DETAILS

Materials and resources from the Teaching and Learning Conference are available to the broader discipline and departments. The Pi Sigma Alpha Keynote Address is available online for viewing. Additionally, meeting discussants and presenters have been asked to submit materials and resources on best practices, the scholarship of teaching and learning, syllabi components, assessment tools, and class exercises to their moderators for posting on the APSA Teaching Resources website in the summer of 2013. To review and download papers presented and view remote session video clips from the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference please visit: www.apsanet.org/teachingconference.

The 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference evaluation was sent out in February. APSA received 183 responses. Preliminary analysis of the Teaching and Learning Conference evaluation data show overwhelming satisfaction with the meeting: 66% report being very satisfied; 28% satisfied; 6% dissatisfied; 0% very dissatisfied with the meeting. 49% of attendees were first time attendees; 96% of the respondents stated that they would recommend the APSA Teaching and Learning Conference to a colleague.

TRACK SUMMARIES

Fourteen tracks, as noted earlier, were offered as follows:

• • Civic Engagement I: Experiential and Service Learning

• • Civic Engagement II: Impact on Political Behavior

• • Conflict and Conflict Resolution

• • Core Curriculum/General Education

• • Curricular and Program Assessment

• • Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Equality

• • Graduate Education: Teaching and Advising Graduate Students

• • Integrating Technology into the Classroom

• • Internationalizing the Curriculum

• • Simulations and Role Play I: American and Simulation Design

• • Simulations and Role Play II: IR and Comparative

• • Teaching Political Theory and Theories

• • Teaching Research Methods

• • Teaching and Learning at Community College

Track summaries from the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference are published in the next pages of PS. These summaries include highlights from the research presented in each track and also recommendations for new strategies—both on the department and discipline level—aimed at advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning. To view the recorded sessions and for more information on the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, please visit www.apsanet.org/teachingconference.

2013 TLC PROGRAM COMMITTEE

APSA thanks the following individuals who served on the conference planning committee and as track moderators.

• • Candace Young (Chair), Truman State University

• • Derrick Cogburn, American University

• • Michelle Deardorff, Jackson State University

• • Boris Ricks, University of California, Northridge

• • Tressa Tabares, American River College

• • Deborah Ward, Rutgers University

We would also like to thank all of the participants who attended the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, and the APSA staff, who contributed to success of the meeting. We look forward to seeing them again at the upcoming 2014 meeting which will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 7–9, 2014.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT I: EXPERIENTIAL AND SERVICE LEARNING

Thomas C. Ellington, Wesleyan College

Joshua A. Green, University of California, Berkeley

Jennifer Kelkres Emery, University of West Florida

Presenters in Civic Engagement I reported using a wide variety of techniques to encourage civic engagement in courses ranging from introductory surveys to graduate seminars. However, the core of the pedagogical model remained constant. Learning from doing is a key counterpart to more traditional lectures and readings. Civic engagement is best taught the way we would learn to ride a bicycle: some of the most important learning comes through doing. In particular, there was a consensus that learning by engaging in activities that also teach citizenship and positive interactions with government should be a part of every political science curriculum. Political science is an academic enterprise, but it can also be a democracy-building exercise if we meet the goal of preparing students to be citizens when they leave our institutions. In pursuit of that end, a number of themes emerged in discussions in this track:

It takes time to build trust and legitimacy with community partners with relationships tending to build incrementally. Engagement with those partners to identify real needs and solutions is essential. Whether it comes under the label of community-based learning, service learning, or something else, a well-designed project in partnership with a group in the community can pay real dividends—in student understanding of political processes and institutions, in civic engagement, and in increased capacity for the group.

Susan Dicklitch reported working on a project with two refugee resettlement organizations in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that evolved over five terms. At the beginning, students were paired with refugee families to assist with basic resettlement tasks. Within a few years, the project had evolved to the point that students participated in the writing of two successful grant proposals and organized a conference to bring together refugee service-provider organizations.

Joyce P. Kaufman's international relations students worked with adults at the Whittier, California, Adult School who were preparing to take the US citizenship test. Students reported positive experiences from the partnership, and the success of the pilot program has inspired the assistant superintendent of the Whittier Union High School District to seek new areas for partnership.

Charles C. Turner described a senior capstone project in which students worked as consultants for seven public agencies in Chico, California, making recommendations for future courses of action. Although there was some variation among agencies in their enthusiasm and cooperation, a good relationship with the assistant city manager proved to be critical to the project's success.

Deeper engagement with community groups tends to come incrementally and is built on a track record of previous successes. Early on, potential partners may doubt students' commitment, their ability to offer meaningful help, and their understanding of a community into which they may not be fully integrated. The most successful partnerships are designed with an eye to doing with, rather than doing for, and with the understanding that members of a community have an expertise on their own needs that people from outside do not have. Track members reported examples of students doing impressive work with community partners, but the most ambitious projects tend to start small and grow with experience and increased trust, rather than being created all at once out of the whole cloth.

The track participants also discussed the challenges that instructors face in executing experiential learning. Service learning is difficult to plan for and control. If students are not intrinsically motivated, and many are not, the syllabus must define the extrinsic achievements. To help students remain consistently engaged in the election season, Lilly Goren creates a long list of items and political events and a point value for each, to maintain students' participation in a flexible manner. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an immersive experience like study abroad taps into affective learning processes not accessed in a traditional classroom. Mike Williams spoke movingly about his experiences “teaching without a syllabus” by taking students to study abroad in South Africa. When students were confronted with unexpected reactions from the local community, he encouraged them to gently investigate the unknown and value that in the educational process.

Beyond giving students a grade for attendance or participation in various events or aspects of a project, sometimes we need to prove that students become better citizens through the work. Small classes are the best fit for service learning, but the N is too small to make quantitative evidence reliable. One solution is to collaborate across institutions for a joint project. Track members Jennifer Kelkres Emery, Alison Howard, Jocelyn Evans, and Mary McHugh conducted an exit poll during the 2012 election and ended with assessment data from 114 students. Qualitative evidence in the form of student feedback works for small courses and unique projects. For example, Kerri Leyda Nicoll presented an ongoing program of qualitative student feedback to develop and monitor the success of a new interdisciplinary minor.

Many institutions and departments struggle to maintain a community because students are working part time or fulltime, more courses are held online, and the student population is diversifying. Before students can help a community through a service-learning project, they have to understand what community is. Lori Andersen embarked on a project with the goal of creating community in a graduate program. She developed a program in which students conduct a service-learning project with the class also designated as the recipient. This gives students the experience of both creating and receiving social capital, a key goal in equipping students to lead and manage public organizations.

We operate in a civic environment in which voter turnout, efficacy, trust in government, and other objective measures of participation continue to decline or lag behind other established democracies. As political scientists we are in the unique position of teaching many students who are just becoming voting citizens who have an awareness of their political roles in society. We should not waste the opportunity to prepare these new voters with both the knowledge and the interest to fully participate in their democracy. One is pedagogical (knowledge), but the other may be seen as normative (interest). However, it was clear from this track's presentations that generating interest and passion in politics, or in policy issues that are personally important to each individual, is an essential part of teaching political science.

Presenters demonstrated several ways to both engage students in the communities around them and learn about politics in the course of that experience. This might mean getting students to work with local refugee resettlement efforts, recruiting them as exit-poll workers during the 2012 presidential election, asking them to form a “consulting group” for public advocacy issues of their choice, or getting a student to figure out how to get a stop sign installed on a street corner.

Political science has an important role to play in the pedagogy of citizenship. Bob Graham, a former senator and governor of Florida and a presenter in the Civic Engagement I track, posed a challenging question to the track participants (paraphrased here): “How can we link how we teach citizenship with future acts of participation by those citizens?” We had no easy answers for Senator Graham's challenging question, but the participants did establish some important guidelines that promote one of the basic tenets of political science instruction: prepare all students to become contributing citizens who participate in, rather than ignore or purposely opt out from, their own government. Taken together, the presentations highlighted personal engagement of the student, interaction with real people in the community on projects, and simple contact with political events or experiences as the best way to prepare students for future participation.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT II: IMPACT ON POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

Elizabeth A. Bennion, Indiana University, South Bend

Sharon Davis, University of Houston

Elizabeth C. Matto, Rutgers University

Concerns remain regarding levels of political knowledge and engagement among America's young people. A healthy democracy requires an informed and active citizenry. As an association we realize our unique position in furthering this democratic ideal by advancing the teaching of political engagement. The recent APSA publication Teaching Civic Engagement: From Student to Active Citizen edited by Alison McCartney, Elizabeth Bennion, and Dick Simpson charts the evolution of civic education from one focused primarily on service-learning to current civic and political engagement learning strategies. Integral to this evolution has been honing the theoretical framework of teaching citizenship and building a set of evidence-based pedagogies that addresses this critical need. Teaching Civic Engagement serves both as a vehicle to advance the scholarship of citizenship as well as a call to action for political scientists. The presentations at this year's conference make it clear that many of the action items articulated in the book are well underway.

Not long ago, track discussions of civic engagement centered on community based service Learning (CBSL). Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado presented such work at the 2013 conference—a project-based experience in which students engaged in service on an international level through a Cuban social service organization and reflected on their experiences. As this research and our discussion suggest, there is a growing appreciation that service learning, to be a meaningful experience, must include opportunities for reflection and discussion and must move away from the idea of service to a community and toward the notion of service undertaken in partnership with a community. The presence of fewer CBSL projects at this year's conference also signals a growing understanding that service learning is not the only way to teach citizenship. Part of the problem in moving beyond service learning was outlined in John Berg's presentation in which he explored the difficulties in distinguishing between civic and political engagement and the need to define more clearly what we mean when we discuss the pedagogy of civic and political engagement.

The presentations in the Civic Engagement II track also demonstrate a new level of methodological sophistication that uses rigorous research designs, address the differentiated effects of instructional interventions, offer a longitudinal view of the effects of civic education, and pioneer models for conducting large-scale and collaborative research.

For example, Ryan Claassen and J. Quin Monson's research uses randomized field experiments with well-designed standardized multicampus protocols to measure the relationship between “new media” (i.e., blogs) and enduring political engagement. These researchers and others also explore the heterogeneous effects of different approaches to civic education. Claassen and Monson contrast the effects of blogs versus traditional essays on knowledge and engagement whereas Leah Murray uses social media sites versus the more standard discussion board forum to measure the level of student engagement on the various platforms. At the high school level, Timothy Vercellotti and Elizabeth Matto's multisite experiment measures the differentiated effects of news consumption, in-class and home discussion, on students' knowledge taking into account parents' levels of political knowledge and students' course placement.

Attention to the long-term effects of various civic education efforts, as exemplified in research presented by Diana Owen and Suzanne Soule, is another indication of this field's growing methodological sophistication. Research like that presented by Wukich and Siciliano demonstrates that specific interventions may yield only short-term, temporary effects that barely last through a semester. Our field is getting better at recognizing and measuring the short-term effects of our pedagogy, and we acknowledge that it is incumbent on us to substantiate the claims about the long-term impact of our work and not rely solely on indirect evidence of short-term effects.

Finally, the use of technology and cutting-edge, large-scale collaborative research via “crowdsourcing” such as the research presented by Rebecca Glazier et al. represents a response to the call in Teaching Civic Engagement and envisioned for the Consortium for InterCampus SoTL Research. Kasniunas and Hill's presentation offers another model for how collaborative learning can take place virtually on more than one campus. Technologies, such as graphics tablets that help educators save time while providing students good feedback, were introduced to the track by Gregory Dixon and suggest another avenue by which innovation can serve educators' needs.

CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Daniel Brunstetter, University of California, Irvine

Daniel Wehrenfennig, University of California, Irvine

Agnieszka Paczynska, George Mason University

Joseph W. Roberts, Roger Williams University

Participants in the 2013 Conflict and Conflict Resolution track, as was the case during the first track meeting in 2012, represented a wide diversity of institutions, including small liberal arts colleges and large public research universities as well as universities outside of the United States. Several common themes linked the rich discussions in the track. Among the most important of these was a sense among the participants that the very nature of conflict, and in particular its complexity, lends itself toward developing innovative teaching approaches, crossing disciplinary boundaries, and incorporating experiential learning activities into the curriculum. A universal trend was that those who teach in this interdisciplinary field regularly incorporate theoretical insights from such fields as psychology, sociology, communications, and anthropology.

Conflict and conflict resolution studies also lends itself to crossing boundaries between teaching and learning that takes place in the traditional classroom and what have usually been seen as students' extracurricular activities. Thus, critical and analytical skills developed during instructional time can be further reinforced and honed by students participating in various clubs and organizations. By the same token, skills that students use through their participation in extracurricular activities, for instance leadership training, can strengthen their performance in the classroom.

The complexity of conflict also provides an opportunity to teach students to think on multiple levels. It teaches them perspective taking, empathy, and the emotional dynamics of conflict. This component should be further developed by increasing the level and complexity of experiential learning in the curriculum. One potential area where this will work well is to leverage our interdisciplinarity—at the department level and at the university level. In conflict studies, we are already at the forefront of this trend by moving beyond academic silos. Another area of opportunity is to encourage students to combine a liberal arts major with a professional minor using conflict resolution as a unifying theme.

Track participants explored the different ways that simulations can be used to teach students about conflict and conflict resolutions. The types of simulations that can be incorporated into the curriculum vary and can range from exercises that require multiple class sessions to complete, to games that can be played virtually, to complex simulations that require additional participants who can play particular roles during the simulation. Simon Radford discussed his use of the game Diplomacy (available as a traditional game or online at www.playdiplomacy.com). This game offers an excellent simulation of the international relations of pre-World War I Europe where students, acting as decision makers, negotiate the international arena. The ultimate goal, depending on the player, might be survival or conquest. Students learn to negotiate to survive or avoid conquest. This outcome forms one of Radford's critical conclusions: what constitutes victory? This question provides an excellent opportunity to relate the simulation to theory. For instance, it allows students to explore how participants in international negotiations about conflict measure success. Joseph W. Roberts looked more specifically at the negotiation process surrounding an irredentist or secessionist ethnic conflict. Roberts designed a simulation to mimic a contemporary ethnic conflict with the key players accurately reflected in the background material but stripped of real identifying characteristics. The goal was to use a fictionalized real conflict to force students to negotiate not how the actual conflict is being addressed but by using the tools and techniques discussed throughout the semester. The most complex simulation was “The Strategy Project” discussed by Michael Hunzeker. This simulation provided a multilevel bargaining simulation of a complex, short-term crisis scenario by combining interstate negotiations and intrastate negotiations/directives between military, executive, and diplomatic cells. Hunzeker also discussed a long-term grand strategy game.

Several key themes emerged from the discussion of including simulations in the curriculum. First, different simulations will accomplish different learning objectives and therefore instructors needs to be very clear about what the particular learning objectives are in their classrooms. Simulations can be a useful pedagogical tool to teach students about strategic decision-making and, decision-making under conditions of ambiguity and tension and when faced with bureaucratic obstacles. These types of simulations can explore both strategic decision-making in crisis situations as well as examine how grand strategy is developed over the long term thus allowing students to also investigate concepts such as path dependency and policy processes. Moreover, simulations are useful tools for teaching students about the complex emotions that participants in a conflict experience and provide a way to teach students about the role of empathy in conflict resolution.

Second, running simulations in classrooms presents particular challenges to instructors who (a) teach large introductory survey courses; and (b) are unable to devote multiple class sessions to a simulation. The track participants noted the need to address these two concerns and think through how to both scale up and scale down simulations as well as other types of experiential exercise so that simulations could be incorporated into more diverse classroom settings. One possible solution to this dilemma is to use virtual simulations, either online gaming simulations or online negotiation simulations. Virtual simulations allow students to participate outside of the class and, for large classes, in multiple iterations of the simulation. Moreover, virtual simulations can be asynchronous negotiations (online discussion boards or e-mail) or synchronous negotiations (video chat or Skype). The former allows students to participate when time permits over a longer period but the negotiation often less effective. The latter allows students to participate more directly but requires timing issues to be resolved. Participants agreed that more attention should be focused on exploring how complex simulations that require multiple class sessions can be simplified in ways that retain key learning outcomes so that these can be used in those classrooms in which instructors have limited time to running simulations.

Track participants also discussed how best to link teaching theoretical concepts in conflict and conflict resolution to their practical application or, put differently, how to effectively provide students with the opportunity to dynamically link the theoretical and the practical. Several participants noted the recent publication by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) that was highly critical of the preparation that students receive in institutions of higher learning that make them less attractive to potential employers when they enter the job market. In particular, the report noted many students' inability to apply theoretical concepts they had learned during their college careers to the practical problems they encounter in the professional world. By incorporating experiential learning activities in the traditional classroom, providing students with opportunities to engage in learning through courses that take them into the field as well as through extracurricular activities, such as Peace Cafes, leadership training, negotiation or mediation training, study visits or meetings with nongovernmental organizations, major international organizations, or governmental agencies, and others, students studying conflict and conflict resolution have a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Furthermore, as Steven Curtis noted in his presentation (“Working for Peace in Situations of Conflict: Embedding Practical Experience in the Study of Conflict Resolution”), experiential learning activities lend themselves especially well toward engaging nontraditional students for whom lecture and discussion format is not particularly effective. In particular, students coming from different education and cultural backgrounds than the institution of higher learning or students who are returning to school after already participating in the job market, often find the traditional classroom challenging and not especially engaging. Experiential learning approaches allow these students to more readily grasp the material and deepen learning. Finally, we should utilize learning communities to encourage integrated learning across courses by involving students in multilevel learning experiences both within and outside the classroom.

One example of combining such experiential learning and conflict resolution is the Olive Tree Initiative, a University of California program that engages students in innovative learning activities. The Olive Tree Initiative combines in-class training in theory and dialogue skills with a study-abroad component, in the form of a three-week trip to a conflicted region, such as the Middle East to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Caucasus to learn more about Turkey-Armenia relations. As panel presenters Daniel Brunstetter and Daniel Wehrenfennig of University of California, Irvine explained, this program responds to criticism in the peace education literature—the view that teaching about conflict resolution has limited short term effects—by supplementing the experiential learning component with long-term scholarship and leadership training for students. They emphasize education in conflict resolution needs to be geared toward helping students learn the skills necessary to better process and confront the life-long challenges related to deep-set conflicts they might face. This educational philosophy speaks to the necessity of our discipline, operating in the complex environment of modern conflicts, to provide a more innovative approach to conflict resolution that exposes students to real-world issues, while also developing life skills that can be exported beyond the classroom.

The discussion concluded with participants agreeing that teaching conflict and conflict resolution provides a unique opportunity to deepen students' understanding of complex social phenomenon and to hone their analytical and critical thinking skills as well as their emotional intelligence. At the same time, teaching about conflict encourages the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and between the traditional classroom and extracurricular activities. The participants agreed to create a blog where they could continue exchanging ideas and instructional materials.

CORE CURRICULUM/GENERAL EDUCATION

Ruxandra Paul, Harvard University

Jesse-Douglas Mathewson, University of Maryland

Brian D. Williams, University of California, Riverside

What can political science contribute to the general education curriculum of college education in the twenty-first century? In the limited exposure to the discipline that students obtain through core courses, several goals have to be simultaneously pursued. The content and skills that are taught have to respond to our students' needs, enabling them to better understand political debates and institutions and encouraging them to participate more fully in political processes and civil society as well as enhancing their metacognitive skills to help them become self-aware, self-directed learners, who possess a healthy dose of interest in politics for the rest of their lives. At the same time, those teaching general education courses are acutely aware of the additional burden of responsibility they carry: because this may be the only glimpse students catch of political science as a discipline, courses cannot just be about political phenomena, but have to address questions like “What do political scientists do?” and “How does a political scientist think about politics and policies?” Finally and relatedly, given how intolerant of ambiguity students are, courses have the difficult mission of revealing the complex and contradictory universe of political realities in a way that teaches students to appreciate nuance and see the value of the ever-frustrating “It depends.”

Can we do all this? And can we do it well? This track included 11 presentations, in which the authors and 24 discussants sought answers to these questions. At the core of the discussions emerged the understanding that general education has inherently political goals: turning students into informed, open-minded, engaged citizens-intellectuals who can thrive in a pluralist society with global horizons. Our conclusion was that political science is uniquely qualified to serve as the capstone of general education.

This claim raises additional questions. If political science is to be the core of general education, what is to be the core of political science? Should we focus on civic education or critical thinking? Can we do both without sacrificing either? Do universities at large share our view about the centrality of political science in the general education curriculum? This summary shares this track's discussion of these questions.

CURRICULAR AND PROGRAM ASSESSMENT

Bryan S. McQuide, Grand View University

Candace C. Young, Truman State University

Bobbi Gentry, Milliken University

“Preparing Students for Success,” was evident in papers and presentations in the Curricular and Program Assessment track. Papers focused on how to prepare students for success in our courses, the major, and the twenty-first century. Building on previous assessment research of student learning outcomes in individual courses as well as the political science major at the program level, this year's papers used more sophisticated methodologies and innovative approaches to assess student learning in political science. Three key themes emerged from our track discussions: the need for greater development of assessment tools to assess student learning outcomes, the need for a wider discussion across the discipline on political science in the twenty-first century, and the need to address academic advising issues.

DIVERSITY, INCLUSIVENESS, AND EQUALITY

Boris E. Ricks, California State University, Northridge

Helen Chang, CUNY-Graduate Center

The tenth annual meeting of the Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Equality (DIE) track at the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference focused on issues of difference, diversity, and inequality as they relate to pedagogical, classroom, department, and institution wide matters from multiple perspectives. The DIE track hosted 12 participants and seven research papers. The papers covered the following topics: (1) Latino/a student retention and success; (2) student perceptions of teachers and the impact on student achievement outcomes; (3) instructional initiatives for ESL students in introductory courses; (4) issues of diversity in the political science classroom; (5) preparing students for global citizenship; (6) campaign commercials, content analysis, and political inequality; and (7) teaching environmental justice. Track discussants provided constructive criticism, careful reflection, and useful feedback to the presenters. Substantive and lively discussions focused on student learning outcomes, teaching methods, inclusive ancillary resources, and the challenges of teaching and learning in a changing classroom climate. These challenges have emerged from changes in the composition of student populations,Footnote ¹ technological change, budgetary issues, an increasingly international context, and the urge for interdisciplinary approaches.

Navigating these changes in classroom climate is critical in helping to ensure student success. Based on this overall theme, we continued conversations from previous years about gender equity, defining diversity, teaching difficult topics, the role of the instructor as facilitator, and supporting teachers with inclusive resources and information. In addition, the following new conversations were integrated into the track from presentations and discussions: (1) the intersection of student success and diversity, (2) understanding both student and faculty perceptions of diversity, and (3) teaching and learning in a changing classroom climate. Civic and community engagement, global issues, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) concerns were also addressed.

GRADUATE EDUCATION: TEACHING AND ADVISING GRADUATE STUDENTS

Katie Cahill-Rincón, Purdue University

Antoinette Christophe, Texas Southern University

Siona Listokin, George Mason University

Graduate education in political science and public affairs is facing several cultural, technological, and professional changes; both masters and doctoral programs must deal with students' shifting career goals and landscape of opportunities, the availability of new technology, and a more diverse pool of applicants. Up-to-date research about the mission, curriculum, and professional development of graduate programs is necessary to adapt and best serve students and the profession, particularly in typically tradition-bound doctoral degree.

The Graduate Education track at the 2013 Teaching and Learning Conference, moderated by John Ishiyama, was the largest in the track's history, with nine paper presentations on research that spanned professional master's programs, doctoral dissertation training, and the job market for future professors. Although the research covered a variety of topics, three broad themes emerged: the need to identify and signal a mission to students; the importance of an improved curriculum and mentorship of graduate students to foster diversity, improve research and professional development; and the recognition that requirements and training affects the marketability of students. We examine these themes in the following text.

Clearly identified missions that permeate the pedagogical core are important in both professional master's degree and doctoral training. Siona Listokin presented research on the influence a master's degree in public policy or public affairs program can have on a political science department. Although the mix of faculty disciplines is more heavily weighted toward public policy in political science departments that also offer a professional master's degree, doctoral students do not seem to follow suit in their choice of dissertation topics. Galya Hamed Al Sulim examined the professionalism of faculty members at a university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She conducted a study involving more than 100 students and used their evaluations of faculty to determine what skills faculty members communicate in their courses.

In addition to clear identification of mission and skill requirements, graduate programs need to improve their curriculum and mentorship of graduate students to foster diversity, improve research and professional development, and prepare students for the next stage in their career. The participants in the Graduate Education track recognized that in a competitive academic market, programs must equip graduate students to operate in diverse settings (Lien, Filler, and Esteban; Al Sulim), to provide them with the skills necessary to teach dynamic courses effectively and the credentials to support those skills (Pollock et al.), to train them to conduct meaningful research in the style most appropriate for their eventual career (Schulenberg; Groth), and to encourage critical and thoughtful challenges to further knowledge in the discipline (Petrescu).

How might graduate programs achieve these objectives? Pei-te Lien, Nicole Filler, and Rhoanne Esteban discussed increasing flexibility in degree requirements and promoting interdisciplinarity at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The UCSB program provides two options for doctoral programs, an emphasis of study or a field paper involving a critical literature review and demonstration of comprehensive knowledge of the political science discipline.

Katie Anne Cahill-Rincón, presenting on behalf of co-authors James A. McCann, Michael R Brownstein, Amanda E. Burke, and Christopher Kulesza highlighted a graduate training module at Purdue University that is intended to broaden the meaning of mentorship and include the retrospective narratives of the highs and lows of academic research from well-established scholars. Terrie Groth made the compelling argument that graduate programs do not have an established method of training for dissertation research; this theme emerged in several discussions on doctoral education. He compared the United States' and Brazil's graduate program designs and notes that the Brazilian programs have less latitude and more controlled duration than those in the United States.

The pedagogical training of future professors was examined in a paper by Kerstin Hamann, Philip Pollock, Bruce Wilson, and Jonathan Williams in an analysis of the teaching requirements of different types of academic job openings. The authors noted that teaching skills are frequently of less concern than the doctoral dissertation in training, yet commands emphasis in many job description requirements. At a more abstract level, Adrian Petrescu discussed pedagogical best practices and questioned whether programs inadvertently teach conformity to its students. Petrescu argues that programs may best serve students by considering the students' future professional tracks, personality, and research traits.

Of course, curriculum, requirements, and expectations are not merely pedagogical concerns, but rather influence the skills and marketability of students prior to their graduation from their programs. Antoinette Spears Christophe and Michael Adams discussed their research on the Texas Southern University's eMPA program, on online program with increasing enrollment. The program enables midcareer professionals who cannot attend traditional classes the opportunity to advance their careers. Professionals receive a balance of conceptual, quantitative, and professional skills; ability to use informative technology system for effective decision-making and communication; and capacity to master problem solving and analytical competencies. Finally, Shawn Schulenberg argued that the master's thesis deserves rethinking, both in terms of its professional development use and insofar as the training and guidance available to students is lacking. In programs with poor thesis completion rates, there is a need for increased focus on course design, credit hours, and possibly accelerated master's degree programs to meet the needs of students and potential employers.

Underlying this rich discussion of the issues facing graduate education, as well as the potential remedies, was a sense that very little is known about how different political science departments operate and the relative outcomes of those pedagogical choices. Is it better to have students take comprehensive exams or to write a master's thesis? Is it more beneficial for students to conduct a lengthy dissertation project or to write several related articles? Does service learning and professional experience add to critical thinking skills or should that time be spent on intensive research? Does highlighting teaching experience and training undermine the marketability of job candidates, or does it increase their attractiveness to potential employers? Will students be more inclined to adopt diverse perspectives if they are exposed to interdisciplinary research, or does this take attention away from training in the discipline? In some very important ways, the discipline lacks the information to make any general claims about the answers to these questions. Instead, departments often operate in the dark regarding graduate education, making changes to their curriculum with little definition of their own identity and goals, as well as their place in the discipline. This undermines the discipline's ability to provide mentorship in professionalization for graduate students. We recommended a discipline-wide analysis of current graduate student curriculum. In particular, what do programs think a graduate degree is for, including MPA, MA, MPP, and PhD programs? The answer to this question should examine programs in regards to mentoring and advising as well as the basic structure of graduate programs and curriculum.

INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

Alexandra Mihai, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Molly Varnadore Campbell, Bay de Noc Community College

Derrick L. Cogburn, American University

The 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference was once again a locus of ideas and sharing of best practices and lessons learned in the integration of technology into the classroom. The Integrating Technology in the Classroom track, comprised of 28 participants from 27 universities and multiple countries, participated in two-and-a-half days of insightful research presentations and engaged discussion. The themes from our 2013 discussions are summarized in the following text.

INTERNATIONALIZING THE CURRICULUM

Katherine Truby, University at Albany, SUNY

Deborah E. Ward, SPAA, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

The Internationalizing the Curriculum track at the 2013 Teaching Learning Conference provided another venue for scholars within the discipline to consider how we fit intellectually and pedagogically within a global movement to “internationalize.” The discipline has supported this discussion for the last seven years through a task force dedicated to the topic, plenary panels, a working group at the annual meetings, and a dedicated track at the Teaching and Learning Conference for the last five years. These endeavors continue to be disseminated to the discipline at large on the APSA website.

Track papers and discussion at the 2013 conference highlighted three key themes: internationalization of the curriculum is an issue of national interest; the relative meaning of “internationalization” may rely on specific cultural or contextual cues; and, finally, internationalization requires the development and promotion of a particular set of skills and knowledge among students in the United States. In light of these themes, the track concluded by encouraging the discipline to take on an advocacy role to advance curricular internationalization through the production of a policy brief and direct lobbying for the appointment of a full-time, director of international education at the US Department of Education.

Internationalizing the curriculum takes on a variety of meanings, given distinct cultural and contextual cues. In past years, this track has developed frameworks for discussing and understanding the concept. However, it has not yet concretely defined what internationalization means to the discipline. This is due, in part, to a lack of systematically collected data on internationalization and to the contextual nature of the term. Despite this challenge, two papers at this track illustrated the internationalization campaigns taking place in both Japan and China. For example, in Japan, Akiba and Toyoda argue the term internationalization implies increased contact and exchange with other countries and institutions. They add that Japan has accomplished this increase in exchanges through study abroad and the development of global studies programs, specifically outlining the program implemented at Akita International University. When the introduction of new study-abroad programs is not possible, Akiba and Toyoda propose using the diversity within one's own classroom to bolster internationalization.

In contrast to internationalization in Japan, Gaye Christoffersen's paper comparing internationalization in the United States and China provides a different comparative perspective on how and why countries choose to promote study abroad and further internationalization. Through a comparative analysis of the 100,000 Strong Initiative in the United States and China's recent efforts to internationalize education through the creation of strong regional ties and programs, the track members engaged in a discussion of the role of power in designing and implementing international programs. In short, in both the American and Chinese cases internationalization clearly was a means of expanding or maintaining state power. However, because of the divergent mechanisms through which internationalization was achieved and the different underlying motivations for the program, the overall outcome is that China has a better working knowledge of the United States than the United States does of China. This conclusion amplifies the importance of one of the overall themes of the track: internationalization is a key component of national interest.

In the context of these papers, the track members turned their discussion to broader questions of whether or not students in the United States were sufficiently prepared to enter a globalized workforce and thrive in an increasingly globalized world. We determined that our students need to develop the skills, knowledge, and capability to deal with globalization. Juli Minoves-Triquell pointed out in his paper that although the fields of study within political science have been fixed for some time, the field of political science is not fixed: the emergence of globalization affects how we teach comparative politics when the state still matters and how we teach political science as a whole. By calibrating our pedagogy to account for the new realities brought on through the process of globalization, we can re-empower our students as citizens to effectively understand, and even develop solutions, for things happening around the world.

To effectively prepare our students to be empowered citizens, we discussed a number of pedagogical techniques that would enhance the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies. The broader conversation regarding the need to help develop knowledge and skills to deal with globalization was informed by a discussion of the challenges our students face as we attempt to internationalize our curricula. In the discussion following Richard Arnold's paper on game Diplomacy, we addressed three key challenges students face: on the whole, our students are not connected to the world outside the United States, or even outside their own town in many cases; students often lack an understanding of both geographical and historical contexts when they enter our classes; and, finally, many students fail to see the importance or even the relevance of international affairs in their own lives. Although the remaining papers in our track discussed teaching methods meant to combat these challenges, we note that these very challenges highlight why internationalization is a matter of national interest and so intricately connected to success in the face of globalization.

As a means of overcoming these challenges and further internationalizing our students' experience, the remaining papers and discussion provide insight into how we can achieve this in the classroom. One route toward internationalization is through guided study-abroad experiences. Mark Peterson outlines how he implemented a guided study-abroad trip for students to Cuba, while Marsha Cavelle Lyle-Gonga and Matthew Kenney presented their experience developing a service-learning trip to Trinidad and Tobago. Both of these papers enabled a discussion about differentiating internationalization at the institutional level from internationalizing a single course, or even a single department's curriculum. In both cases, there was institutional support for the development of study-aboard programs, including financial support for students. Whereas each paper provides valuable information about how to organize a trip abroad, the key element provoking discussion was the student-centered characteristic of each trip. Placing students in leadership roles, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, or making students responsible for preparing for the trip and completing preliminary research on questions that interest them, in the case of Cuba, provided students with the knowledge and skills necessary to truly benefit from their international experience.

In cases where international trips are not possible, the track discussed a number of specific methods that could be used to further internationalize students' experiences in a course. Maria Rosa Garcia-Acevedo shared her insights on the challenges of teaching Latin American politics, compiled in a paper with Gloria Guevara. By implementing a survey at the beginning and end of their course, they gauged the biases (through positive and negative images) their students held about Latin America. Through multiple media, including films, literature, research papers, lectures, and student presentations, the authors elicited responses from their students as to how their perceptions about Latin America changed and what pedagogical tools facilitated these changes the most. The track discussed the inherent value in surveying our students systematically to compile data over the course of several semesters, not only to collect information about their perceptions and biases, but also to compile evidence as to which methods successfully changed their perceptions.

Garcia-Acevedo and Guevara's paper alongside that of Christopher Cook allowed for a lengthy discussion about the value of using film in the classroom to assist in internationalization. Cook's paper addressed three films he uses in the classroom to teach about terrorism. One of the key outcomes of this discussion is that films represent an artistic interpretation of events; they are not truths. This requires students to learn to view them critically, pointing out their biases. Another challenge the track discussed relates to how we mediate the messages we send through the media we use. While films in particular present clear visual representations of the concepts at hand, they also have the ability to present exaggerated versions of negative phenomena (i.e., poverty, violence, and corruption). When using film in the classroom, it is our responsibility to ensure that we do not simply reify negative preconceived notions, but turn those biases on their heads by prompting our students to ask questions.

Overall, the track this year established the importance of internationalized education to national interest, given the distinct cultural contexts through which such programs develop. Considering the challenges our students face, and given the current global economic and political turmoil, it is imperative that we empower our students as citizens through the development of skills, knowledge, and capabilities relevant to a globalized world. Despite the overwhelming importance of internationalization, many challenges must be overcome. It is because of these challenges, namely tightening budgets at all levels and a lack of consistent leadership at institutions like the Department of Education, that our track concluded with a call to the discipline to advocate for more funds for international education. To take on this advocacy position, we must work to break down the barriers between subfields within political science, reach out to our colleagues around the world, and commit to providing more pedagogical resources to the discipline. Throughout this process, we must remain careful that nurturing global citizenship does not become a euphemism for bending the world to fit into an American lens. Rather, we should work to internationalize our courses, our overall curriculum, and our discipline as whole, to ensure that our students are well-prepared to operate in this new, and ever-changing, global environment. In short, internationalizing the curriculum must transcend the local. We must take on an advocacy responsibility and join the globalized international education movement.

SIMULATIONS AND ROLE PLAY I: AMERICAN AND SIMULATION DESIGN

Arthur H. Auerbach, University of Southern California

Track presenters and discussants in the Simulations and Role Play I: American Politics and Simulation Design track discussed nine papers during the conference. The papers were placed in one of four sessions, including: building the intrastructure of a simulation, managing the exercise, simulations involving elections and policy, and simulating the political process. Although each session was distinct in-and-of-itself, a common theme was discovered throughout each presentation—the need to balance the standardization of simulations against customization in order for simulations to be a useful pedagogical tool in the classroom.

SIMULATIONS AND ROLE PLAY II: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND COMPARATIVE POLITICS

Amanda M. Rosen, Webster University

Patricia Stapleton, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Baris Kesgin, Susquehanna University

At the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, participants in the Simulations and Role Play II: International Relations and Comparative Politics track continued to explore the different ways in which simulations and role-playing activities can enhance the political science classroom. During the 2013 sessions, four main themes emerged: the use of games and simulations need to be carefully evaluated along several criteria before implementation in the classroom; games and simulations may provide opportunities to explore empathy and ethics in student learning; games and simulations can help contextualize topics in politics; and games and simulations can provide fertile ground for interdisciplinary collaboration.

TEACHING AND LEARNING AT COMMUNITY COLLEGES

Ryan Emenaker, College of the Redwoods

Helen R. Colosimo, Ivy Tech Community College

Erin Richards, Cascadia Community College

For the second year in a row, the Teaching and Learning at Community Colleges (TLCC) track had the largest number of participants and spanned a wide-variety of topics. These topics complemented themes from the tracks on civic engagement, core curriculum/general education, integrating technology in the classroom, and simulations and role play. Appropriately, the diversity of topics presented in the TLCC track is reflective of the diversity inherent to the community college educator. While many political scientists choose to refer to themselves as Americanist, comparativist, or internationalist, community college faculty might be best described as “introductionist” because they often teach a wide-range of core political science undergraduate classes. Teaching outside of one's subfield is not unique to community colleges, but it is exaggerated in a setting where high teaching loads and one-person departments are common.

The papers presented drew from the unique position of community college educators. Just like our colleagues at four-year institutions, educators at community colleges recognize our ultimate goal is to teach our students to read the world around them, to help our students understand political thinking, and to instill our students with a sense of citizenship. However, our students require some different strategies to reach this shared goal.

Community colleges serve more than 40% of the undergraduate student population in the United States. Students attend community college for a variety of reasons, and most systems have an open-admissions policy; this makes for widely diverse classrooms. Some community college students did not satisfactorily meet university admission requirements, while others were accepted into top-tier institutions but choose to stay near home for economic, family, or community obligations. Some community college students are concurrently enrolled in high-school while others are senior citizens looking for lifelong learning opportunities. Community colleges also accommodate community members looking to brush up on their skills for the workforce. Many community colleges have a high number of veterans and a high percentage of students enrolled in disabled student services. Finally, more than half of community college enrollment is comprised of students who are part-time. This diversity is part of what makes teaching at a community college unique. Thus, community college educators must intellectually challenge students bound for R1s while academically developing students who cannot compose a full paragraph.

Diverse student populations are not exclusive to community colleges, but the range of student development exhibited in one classroom is often amplified. This provides more than a challenge; it makes community colleges a great setting to develop engaging learning activities that reach a broad spectrum of learners. The presentations in this track recognized this need to cater to diverse learning despite tight budgets and severe time constraints (imposed by strenuous teaching loads). The concepts highlighted during the track ranged from using active-learning techniques and theories to instilling civic education and providing outside-the-classroom learning.

Emily Neal (St. Louis Community College) relayed findings in support of the supplemental instruction (SI) program on her campus. Survey data supported the assertion that, by encouraging all students to participate in peer-assisted study sessions, SI can help learners of all levels, rather than singling out and stigmatizing a few at-risk students. This model also allows advanced students to develop their leadership skills by being SI leaders. Often at the community college level, few political science courses are available for students excited by the discipline. SI provides a model to allow engaged students to continue their political science education.

Sarah Woiteshek and John Forren (Miami University Hamilton) presented ideas for staff/faculty partnerships and campus-wide events as methods to teach civic engagement. Their paper “Building Faculty/Staff Learning Partnerships to Enhance Student Civic Engagement: Lessons Learned from the 2012 Election Season” detailed both the hurdles and positive outcomes for collaborations on their campus. In the community college environment, where one-person (or few-person) departments are common, political science educators need to reach out to educators from other disciplines and staff for collaboration in teaching political science themes. This approach can also help engage community college student populations who are often disengaged from the student life on campus.

While Woiteshek and Forren engaged students with campus activities, David Selby (Ohlone Junior College) detailed three practical learning activities he developed to teach introductory themes in political science. These activities included a research project with detailed guidance for conducting historical research and a campaign participation project that prompted off-campus engagement. Such structured learning activities can be particularly important at community colleges that typically have limited libraries, few research librarians, and reduced research materials. Without these resources, classroom learning activities must provide more guidance to student researchers to ensure they are prepared for the more advanced research they will experience in upper-division classes. Further, many community colleges are expected to provide job training. By teaching students politics through participation in campaign activities, community college educators can serve both of these roles; students learn how politics work in the real world and experience the requirements of a professional work environment. Participation in campaign activities can also serve another important need: because community college students are likely to be from the local community and are likely to stay in the area after completing their education, participation in local campaigns can provide valuable connections to local political actors and inroads to post-college job opportunities.

Amy Widestrom (Arcadia University) presented on her experience using the satire of The Simpsons to engage and educate introductory students. She conveyed how to incorporate specific episodes into an introductory classroom while simultaneously providing a broader model for using popular culture critiques as a method to stimulate critical thinking. Ryan Emenaker (College of the Redwoods) flipped around the standard paper presentation by putting the track participants through his mini-simulation, “Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Constitution.” The simulation was developed to interactively teach students common introductory themes such as congressional powers, constitutional interpretation, and limited government. Drawing on the needs of community college faculty, Emenaker's activity, like many of the activities described by the presentations, was constructed to be portable to many different types of classes as well as used to benefit students at different academic levels.

Heather Pool and Allison Rank (University of Washington) provided insight from their experiences crafting prompts to “create assignments that are challenging but clear and doable.” Thomas Kolasa (Troy University) offered strategies for an interdisciplinary approach to comparative politics with the use of multicultural and international multimedia. As innovative and informative as the strategies presented, track participants expressed concerns that our desire to cater to student needs can lead to spoon-feeding information in a way that harms critical thinking. Track participants noted it is imperative to “meet students where they are” without “dumbing down” the material. This is a particular challenge in the community college classroom where students run the full gamut of skills and abilities requiring instructors to carefully balance challenging more advanced students while supporting those less prepared. The teaching approaches and pedagogical considerations highlighted previously move us forward to meeting that challenge.

Nancy Bednar (Antelope Valley College) presented a paper critical of the push toward massive open online courses (MOOCs) that enroll thousands of students in one virtual classroom. While MOOCs show great promise to make education more accessible, they also risk turning education into infotainment. This concern, between being engaging and educational, is particularly relevant for those who teach introductory classes composed primarily of nonmajors.

It was noted that several of the TLCC track themes overlapped other tracks; the discussion themes have relevancy to our colleagues teaching across the discipline. In fact, several TLCC track participants teach at four-year institutions. However, this is indicative that much can be gained from greater integration of community college educators into the APSA as well as the comingling of political science educators from different types of colleges. The 2012 TLCC track encouraged the APSA to explore the needs of a task force on community colleges. That task force is now moving forward. With the APSA's help, stronger partnerships between two-year and four-year institutions are possible. The track participants call on the APSA to continue finding ways to facilitate relationships between faculty at two- and four-year institutions to draw on our respective strengths and expertise to benefit one another. Two-year faculty as “introductionists,” need to keep up on the most recent and cutting-edge research in a wide variety of fields, often outside of our own areas of expertise and training; in return, two-year faculty can share their innovative pedagogical strategies to meet the wide range of students in our classrooms.

As many four-year institutions' political science majors start at community colleges, the better community college faculty prepare these students, the better off political science departments at four-year institutions will be, and the better off the discipline will be. The track participants call on the APSA to help facilitate sharing resources between two and four year schools. For example, community colleges have far more limited access to resources such as library research materials. As community colleges feed students into higher degree level institutions, we need to have conversations with our transfer institutions to work collaboratively to develop prepared students. Finally, with most political science teaching positions in today's job market existing at the community college level, the importance of graduate schools, the training ground and sole pipeline for the next generation of political science faculty, continuing the discussion regarding a broad-based education in political science cannot be underestimated.

TEACHING POLITICAL THEORY AND THEORIES

Kathleen Cole, University of California, Santa Barbara

Stacey Hunter Hecht, Bethel University

Michelle Schwarze, University of California, Davis

Benli M. Shechter, Richard J. Daley College

Alison Staudinger, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay

A few dominant themes emerged through discussion of papers in the Teaching Political Theory and Theories track: the proper use of Internet-based and blended learning models, the cultivation of multiple literacies and narrative approaches to teaching political theory, and the contextualization of the political theory student, professor, and department. Participants agreed that learning how to read theoretical texts and how to think analytically about those texts requires students to develop interpretive skills, but there was lively debate about the teaching methods appropriate for achieving the goals of theory education.

TEACHING RESEARCH METHODS

Julia M. Lau Bertrand, Georgetown University

Emily J. Schaefer, McDaniel College

At the landmark 10th APSA Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC), participants in the Teaching Research Methods (TRM) 2013 track held lively discussions and debates about best practices in the teaching of research methods, including the use of innovative techniques and technology in the classroom, as well as how to integrate research methods into the broader undergraduate curriculum. While there was continuity in the themes discussed, echoing several points made in TRM track discussions over the past decade, there was a distinct desire to move the profession forward in terms of articulating specific and achievable goals in teaching research methods across the political science curriculum.