Moodle Learning Management System

Online material for courses.

Courses Taught

Introduction to American Government, Introduction to Political Science, Introduction to Political Theory, Environmental Justice and Public Policy, Environmental Philosophy, Politics of Science and Technology, Modern Political Thought, American Political Thought, Contemporary Political Thought, Comparative and International Political Economy, Introduction to Comparative Politics, Western European Politics

Lectures

• Scientific Reasoning
• Correlation and Regression

(Note that the speed of the Flash presentation is meant to discourage students from using them as substitutes for class attendence.)

• What are Government and Politics?
• Classical Liberalism and the American Founding

Learning Resources

The Electoral College has a significant effect on the campaign strategies of presidential candidates. This exercise, which follows a lecture explaining how the system of presidential elections makes "swing states" the keys to campaigns, asks students to choose how to spend $25 million in the final weeks of a presidential campaign. Lacking sufficient resources to win the popular vote, students must prioritize their spending according to the states most likely to change the outcome of the election. Students enter the amount spent in each state, and see the effects of that spending on their total electoral votes. The lesson reinforces the idea that, because the Electoral College is a winner-take-all system, the most important states for presidential candidates are those with large numbers of electoral votes and close margins of victory.

One of the major concerns in urban planning since the 1990s has been environmental justice. This exercise is designed to teach students how to evaluate the environmental justice implications of planning projects. Students must propose a freight transportation corridors for the City of Lawton, Oklahoma chosen from among three possibilities. Using ArcGIS-developed maps of the routes and affected populations, the students must consider the effects of the corridor proposals on the community with reference to cost, pollution, and hazardous materials risk. Students evaluate distributive effects with respect to both disadvantaged groups and property rights.

This web-based simulation uses a simplified form of the Congressional legislative process, structured as an extensive-form game, to illustrate the major effects of multiple veto points on legislative strategy: the best way to pass a bill is through negotiation, cooperation, and compromise. Students are placed in the role of a Senator and assigned to pass a bill appropriating funds for a flood control project. They must take steps to get the bill through committee, the Senate floor, and the conference committee.

Assessment and Institutional Research

Cameron University requires all programs to annually evaluate program effectiveness. As chair of the assessment process for the political science program, my responsibilities involve full coordination of the strategic planning and adaptive management plan. Coordinating program faculty, we developed program goals and measurable objectives, assessed achievement of these objectives using a combination of direct and indirect measures, and took steps to improve those areas in which weaknesses were apparent. As a consequence of the past four years’ efforts, the program consistent exceeded national averages in student performance in several subfields of the discipline. I also led the expanded assessment efforts in political theory. Resulting changes in the program led to the first-ever achievement of program objectives in political theory.

Until 2007, the course evaluation process at Cameron University took place entirely within individual departments. The result was a chaotic set of very different standards for performance that prevented effective evaluation of university performance. The Academic Standards and Policies Committee on which I served was tasked with remedying the situation. In a stakeholder-focused process to which each committee member brought a different set of interests and goals, the committee identified specific goals for the common course evaluation, selected a commercial provider whose service best balanced the need for flexibility and for a common structure, and conducted a pilot implementation study. The process has been fully implemented for the 2007-2008 academic year, and will generate consistent and nationally comparable data to enhance decision-making in the university.

Educational Research

Simulations and web-based tools are becoming increasingly common techniques for teaching in undergraduate courses. This study examines one approach to building such tools. By combining the parallel structures of extensive-form games, experiential simulations, and the simple language behind the World Wide Web, it is possible to combine content, pedagogy, and presentation into an effective approach to learning. The online simulation of an extensive-form game is a form of active learning understood as activities that require the student to participate in using a body of knowledge to accomplish some practical task. To test the effectiveness of simulations, we surveyed students in a course that used a simulation of the legislative process in the United States Congress in an introductory American government course and compared student reported participation in and preparation for the simulation to both self-reported and direct measures of student performance. Results show that students perceive improvement in performance, but this is contradicted by the direct measures, which show no evidence that simulations are effective means of improving student performance on assignments. While several reasons for this may be present, this study concludes that simulations, and active learning in general, more likely improve students’ affective orientation toward the course material, especially their confidence in their ability to use the material, than their achievement of specific traditional learning objectives.

This paper argues that the standard approach to teaching the history of political thought does not serve the ultimate goals of political theory education, and that alternative approaches are needed to make the history of thought appropriate for undergraduates. A history of political thought for life ought to enhance a person’s capacity to act as a political animal in three ways: as a moral person, as a free person, and as a citizen. But the most common practices in teaching the history of political thought suffer from the same criticisms that have been leveled at contemporary research in political theory, thereby undermining the study of political theory for life. Teaching the history of political thought should be based on a model where classical texts serve as Socratic gadflies that provide alternative perspectives on the perennial questions posed by contemporary political practice. Two alternative models can integrate both traditional approaches to the history of political thought with contemporary political practice to produce a history of political thought for life that is appropriate to the purposes of undergraduate education in political theory.

Author Posting. (c) Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Political Science Education, Volume 4 Issue 3, July 2008. doi:10.1080/15512160802202748 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512160802202748)