Comparing educational experience, culture and academic practice within Europe can often be an interesting and rewarding exercise. The observations in this article are based on the author's experience of six and half years' teaching at two universities in Bavaria, the completion of a doctorate at the Free University Berlin, two degrees at the University of Edinburgh (one in history, the other in social sciences), and, most recently, two years' teaching in the Politics and Contemporary History Subject Group at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. The aim is to reflect on the experience of teaching in two different European academic systems, with a view to making some comparisons as well as observations on the changes which have taken place in the UK higher education system over the last two decades.

The use of simulations in higher education teaching is burgeoning in political science curricula, particularly in international relations and European Union studies. This article contends that most simulations suffer from complexity bias and put too much emphasis on substantive knowledge. Drawing on the author’s experience, two ideal types of simulations are developed. ‘Complex’ simulations focusing on negotiating content and ‘simple’ simulations focusing on negotiating dynamics. It is argued that the transmission of transferable skills is facilitated by multiple repetitions of similar negotiating contexts within the same module. This suggests that instructors face a trade-off between teaching transferable skills and substantive knowledge and should locate their simulations at either end of this continuum. Where students are not native speakers, not yet familiar with specialised terminology or simply unversed in negotiating dynamics, there is a particularly strong argument to make for carrying out simple simulations first, followed by complex simulations later in the curriculum. Finally, opportunities for collaborative research are highlighted. Gathering and pooling data from simple simulations bridges pedagogy and research at minimal additional cost.

Experiments are taking on greater significance in political science. However, academic courses on methods at German higher education institutions rarely focus on experimental political science. This article presents a methodological course on experiments in political science at the University of Muenster based on the conveyed contents of the course. It analyses the course from the students’ and lecturers’ perspective. The article aims to provide an incentive for future courses on experimental political science.

Teaching within Higher Education has traditionally been seen as a vital part of the professional apprenticeship of Politics postgraduates. Changes in UK Higher Education in the past twenty years have seen the numbers of postgraduates accepting some teaching duties while writing a Ph.D. grow. This article draws on the experience of the author and some of his Ph.D. colleagues to consider the challenges and benefits of teaching, and the status of postgraduates as educators.

Western lecturers visiting social science departments in the former Soviet Union find themselves immersed in a social micro-system that often functions differently from comparable departments in the West. Having been isolated from international developments and abused as instruments of indoctrination for decades, post-Soviet social sciences are plagued by a number of pathologies in administration, teaching, and studying. While posing considerable challenges for visiting professors, these defects make the continued presence of Western visiting lecturer programmes in the former USSR all the more necessary.

Political theory, with its abstract reasoning and unfamiliar vocabulary, is a subject that students are often apprehensive about. Whilst popular culture has been employed extensively in the teaching of other areas of political science, such as international relations, I seek to draw attention to its comparative under-use in political theory and argue that it is a highly effective teaching tool for this subject. I use the autoethnographic method to make my case, drawing on my years-long experience in the university classroom, and take this position for three key reasons: the familiar nature of popular culture allows students to more easily acclimate to the political theory classroom, it renders abstract political theory concrete, and provides a useful arena in which to better test the logic of political theory arguments, enhancing student criticality.

Massive open online courses (MOOC) have been considered by some observers as a powerful opportunity to improve distant learning. The Université catholique de Louvain was the first Belgian university to deliver a political science MOOC (Louv3x) in French, entitled ‘Discovering political science’ (Découvrir la science politique). This paper seeks to explore the challenges a pedagogical team faces when transforming a ‘traditional’ political science introductory course into a MOOC. The paper also explores how the use of a MOOC might impact the learning outcome within on-campus and worldwide students.

This article argues that European doctoral programmes in political science should have three main aspirations. First, students must master the cutting edge research literature, and thus should get the high-level training that they need in both theory and methodology. Second, programmes should expose students to multidisciplinary influences and strong skills of critical analysis, so that they may see further than the current generation. Finally, in order to reproduce the profession, students must be taught to become excellent teachers.

This article reports the results of a small-scale research project on the role of a virtual learning environment (VLE) in the teaching of political concepts and reasoning in the fourth year of a Scottish honours degree programme. It suggests that here the kind of dynamic facilitated by traditional face-to-face seminar discussions is very important, but not easy to recreate in the VLE. Nonetheless, students find at least significant complementary learning opportunities in the VLE. Where possible, a combination of formats seems appropriate.

By looking at political thought in historical periods that mirror our own, we can discern patterns of thought which clairvoyantly recognise the new and fearfully retreat to established patterns of thought. Sixteenth-century thought confronts us with the search for newly emerging political orders. Focusing on four thinkers, this paper explicates the emerging pattern. It reflects on the contemporary relevance of sixteenth-century thought and the relevance of the history of ideas.

Despite the normative origins of our discipline, political scientists often embrace our role as objective scholars, to the point of teaching our students to undertake research without also helping them to become public-spirited citizens. This essay argues that this restrained approach is inadequate to maintain political science’s relevance in an era characterized by heightened partisan polarization, rising authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. To help our students sustain democratic systems of government going forward, political scientists must not only recognize our normative roots, but must also extend our normative agenda to a reinvigorated civic engagement pedagogy that is timely, intersectional, and internationalized. In short, how and what we teach our students is the key to our discipline’s relevance in difficult political times.

This paper analyses changes in attitudes towards politics among the students of a Bachelor of Communication degree program in Spain after applying an educational innovation project including a formal civic education, an open classroom climate and collaborative learning strategies in politics. The effects of the project on the knowledge and interest towards politics of the participants were measured through a mixed methodology. First, a survey was administered both before and after the project was implemented. Second, focus groups were also conducted in both referred moments. The results show an increase in both understanding and having an interest in politics among students. In the context of low levels of formal instruction on politics during secondary school, such as in the Spanish case, these findings show that political disaffection among youth relates to a serious lack of knowledge about politics.

This article describes a pedagogical innovation implemented in our introductory linguistics course. We supplement classic theory building with a series of labs, deployed through a co-requisite ‘lab’ course that meets weekly. This builds on two previously established teaching strategies: the implementation of hands-on activities in linguistics classrooms, and the lab sections traditionally utilized in the natural sciences. The labs aim to fulfill three goals: (i) to better represent the field of linguistics in our introductory course, (ii) to help students solidify theories and connect them to the real world, and (iii) to teach practical skills for linguistics research and more broadly.

One of the structural problems of introductory lectures is that students’ learning progress is primarily assessed by taking a final exam. Weekly preparation and reading are driven only by self-motivation. Can a student’s decision to complete her weekly assignments be influenced by a simple reminder? In a pre-registered experimental design, we test if personalised reminders from the instructor delivered via text messages contribute to learning outcomes. We assess formative learning via regular quizzes at the beginning of each class, and summative learning via grades in a final exam. We do not find statistically significant differences in learning outcomes, and discuss how design features potentially drive this result. In the conclusion, we stress the importance of experimental design in assessing innovative and new learning techniques.

The paper deals with a couple of speculations by John E. Trent with respect to the state and impact of contemporary political science. It particularly takes issue with the Trent claim that political science must become more relevant and instead emphasizes the need for an independent science system. Furthermore, it accepts the notion that there is a problem with respect to overspecialization but regards this as a necessity if science and research want to move ahead. The Trent argument about schisms in political science theorizing and research methodology must be taken seriously, but can and should be counteracted by the good will of scholars to seek regular intellectual exchanges also in fields where controversy rages. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the Trent worldview is very much a North American one that should be balanced by looking also at other political science communities around the world.

Experimental methods are on the rise in Political Science, and we have a growing demand for teaching experimental methods within university courses. This article is an update on an article published in European Political Science (EPS) in 2012 titled ‘Teaching Experimental Political Science’. It presents an alternative teaching concept, where experiments are not just experienced but also designed by students. Consequently, this article argues that teaching experimental methods in Political Science should include students working on their own research projects.

The aim of this article is questioning the commonly held assumption that Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is necessarily good for students. Drawing on the experience of teaching a postgraduate module about terrorism and the media as a case study, it shows that PBL can definitely benefit the Political Communication curriculum. However, this is only part of the story. PBL, in fact, appears to have an ‘amplifier’ effect on the learning outcomes of a module: the achievement of outstanding results for those who are committed to the coursework; lower achievement than would have been gained through more ‘traditional’ learning methods for those who do not fully engage with it. As the case study suggests, students’ individual expectations and previous experiences of coursework, although currently overlooked, appear to make all the difference within the learning process.

In this paper we discuss how an innovative audio-visual project was adopted to foster active, rather than declarative learning, in critical International Relations (IR). First, we explore the aesthetic turn in IR, to contrast this with forms of representation that have dominated IR scholarship. Second, we describe how students were asked to record short audio or video projects to explore their own insights through aesthetic and non-written formats. Third, we explain how these projects are understood to be deeply embedded in social science methodologies. We cite our inspiration from applying a personal sociological imagination, as a way to counterbalance a ‘marketised’ slant in higher education, in a global economy where students are often encouraged to consume, rather than produce knowledge. Finally, we draw conclusions in terms of deeper forms of student engagement leading to new ways of thinking and presenting new skills and new connections between theory and practice.

In recent years, a growing body of literature has widely investigated the impact of role-playing simulations in teaching politics and international relations. While scholars agree that participating in simulations is helpful for the students in developing their skills, the evidence about benefits is more mixed. Moreover, the question whether all students—regardless of their demographic or academic background—benefit similarly from simulations remains largely unanswered. This article, based on a cross-national survey submitted to students from Italy and the Netherlands who have participated in the Model United Nations (MUN), provides an innovative contribution to the current literature by looking at views and opinions of students coming from different educational contexts. Our empirical results suggest that students perceive that MUN increases their skills regardless of their academic and socio-demographic background. The quantitative analysis, based on OLS regression models, reveals that the individual students’ background does not influence their perceived benefit, nor their enjoyment of the experience. MUNs appear to be educational as well as fun for all students, regardless of their age, gender, field of study, seniority, and academic homeland.