The primary form of experiential education in political science is an internship in a government office. Too often, however, with little actual monitoring of their experiences, government interns become little more than classic office "gofers." Fortunately, there are strategies to make political internships not only useful learning experiences for…

Revenue, expenditure, and employment data indicate that county governments--once taken for granted and playing "second fiddle" to municipalities--are playing an increasingly important role (and sometimes a role equal to that of municipalities) as vital service providers. Therefore, one would expect that county governments and municipal governments…

Discussion is one form of active learning, which has been linked to better learner outcomes. Little is known about the relationship between active learning through discussion and learner outcome in the online environment. Here, we construct an index of active learning online that includes the number of postings a student has read, the number of…

By examining American University's Washington Semester Program (AUWSP), this project analyzes the impact of intensive undergraduate experiential and active learning on subsequent student academic performance. In this article, we discuss the differences between traditional, active, and experiential learning methods to better understand the…

Should political science educators use debate for teaching their undergraduate students? This article argues for incorporation of academic debate into curriculum of undergraduate courses. It demonstrates the process of arriving at a decision favorable of debate through exploration and analysis of competitive reasons, arguments, and evidence for…

For the past decade the buzz words in teaching and learning have consisted of "the knowledge economy," "information literacy," and "transferable skills." The idea being; ensure students emerge from higher education with the skills needed to participate in the "knowledge economy." In response academics have increasingly been encouraged to…

In January of 2004, we took 35 college students to Manchester, New Hampshire, where they were immersed in the crucial final weeks of the Democratic Presidential Primary as part of a course on the presidential election. This course required students to work on the campaign of their choice in the weeks leading up to the state's primary as well as…

Conducting collaborative fieldwork between American researchers and foreign scholars in developing countries is a difficult prospect for political scientists. Yet, we can use our knowledge and position at an American university to contribute to the academic community in our areas of study and establish lasting personal and institutional ties with…

The benefits of active learning are well documented; nonetheless, the implementation of active learning strategies can be challenging in large lecture environments. The project will examine the research supporting active learning, present the implementation of simple active learning techniques in large lecture classes, and provide evidence to test…

Some conservative critics of higher education have asserted that the current generation of American professors, especially those in the social sciences and humanities, are using their classrooms to advance a liberal political agenda. As evidence, they point to surveys of the political leanings of faculty and have accumulated examples of individual…

This article tests a relationship between class attendance and final grades in several political science courses that I taught at the University of Georgia, University of Vermont, and University of Central Arkansas between the Fall 2000 and Spring 2006 semesters. The study employs ordinary least square estimators to test the foregoing hypothesis.…

This article addresses the pros and cons of incorporating more non-canonical political theory into our introductory political theory courses. I begin by identifying what I take to be the goals of an introductory political theory class. Based on these four goals, I examine the reasons why we tend not to include non-canonical works in our…

Structured classroom debates (SCDs), whereby teams of students debate a question prepared outside of class, help advance two goals many political science instructors struggle to achieve with their students: classroom participation beyond the "usual suspects" present in every classroom and critical thinking and analysis of political issues. This…

The aim of the study was to examine do health care students, who study at different programs, value similar expert qualities. To investigate this issue, a questionnaire was administered among health care students in a Finnish polytechnic (two cohorts, total n = 466), consisting of a scale for rating the importance of different expert qualities.…

The study describes the learning process in psychiatry of medical students through their clerkship and internship, It focused upon the development of students' attitudes to psychiatry, subjective psychiatric competence and self-confidence. The relationships between the participants' background, aspects of the learning environment, their attitudes…