This article introduces a bundle of active learning activities for an introductory undergraduate course in research methods. In particular, the activities aim to help students develop core knowledge and skills that provide a foundation for reading and conducting quantitative and qualitative research. Active learning is a pedagogical practice with well-established benefits such as better student attitudes and improved content comprehension and application. I build on this conventional wisdom by applying a student-centred evaluation method, demonstrating that students perceive active learning as an effective complement to traditional lecturing and assignments for learning core methodological topics in political science.

This article endeavours to explain why English Canadians and Quebeckers differ in their opinions about private healthcare options. Data indicates that respondents in the nine predominantly English-speaking provinces are more likely to oppose private hospitals than Quebeckers. No one province or region in “English Canada” drives these results: aversion to private hospitals is consistent across the nine provinces. Research on welfare states slots Canada into the “liberal” category, which is indicative of a preference for market solutions to welfare problems, which makes this finding perplexing. The argument presented here is that universal healthcare has become bound up with the national identity of English Canada, resulting in a general aversion to private healthcare initiatives outside of Quebec.