Reflections on APSA-TLC

Overall, I think teaching conferences are worthwhile. Yes, the conference is markedly different from a “typical” academic conference (for one thing, there’s a larger share of faculty from community colleges & “directional” schools). And I know many “research-oriented” faculty don’t seem to find much of a purpose in a conference on teaching (after all, it’s only a third of what we do, right?). But even when some of the paper presentations are less-than-inspirational, I have both times managed to walk away w/ an interesting nugget or two that I think will improve my teaching.

The conference is broken up into “track” workshops that stick together throughout the weekend, except when we are free to break up for elective “open” workshop presentations. I was in the research methods track, where we spent much of our time discussing better ways to teach methods and/or to assess how well our students learn what we think we teach them. Here’s the two most interesting papers from my track sessions.

One was by Shane Ralston, a philosopher teaching ethics at PSU-Hazleton. Because his course was aimed at preparing people who will work in public policy (not “research”), he crafted his course around the idea of solving practical problems. To do so, he used the American philosopher John Dewey, who made a clear distinction between empiricism and scientism. I found the talk intriguing. The most memorable moment was when an older professor from Morehouse chuckled, because he had been a PhD student decades ago under David Truman. Turns out Truman, one of the fathers of American behavioralism began all his research methods courses by using Dewey.

Another was by Daniel Esser, methods professor at American University’s SIS (School of International Studies). He had given his current-semester students a pre-test to determine their disciplinary background & methods proficiency. He suggested that faculty could embrace the “disciplinary diversity” of students. One idea was to reconsider what methods students already were familiar with—and which would be more likely to be useful in their future careers. The other was to team up students w/ diverse backgrounds so that students could help each other to master different kinds of methods. While he thought this probably applied primarily to similar masters’ programs, I thought this could easily apply to undergraduate programs as well (especially if the methods course regularly served a variety of non-majors or if the course is part of an interdisciplinary major).

The two elective workshops I attended were also quite useful. In the first, two faculty members from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Dighton Fiddner & David Chambers) walked us through an amazing quasi-experiment they did at their campus. As a way to show students how the research process is non-linear (there are a lot of fits & starts), they set up a room w/ a multidisciplinary group of experts on a topic (in their case, cyber terrorism) who debated potential policy/research options. The students had real time access (though a variety of cameras) to the day-long discussion, and were able to see how difficult it was for a roomful of PhDs to come up w/ a research question. I’m not sure how easily that kind of model can be replicated, but it does suggest a number of possibilities.

The other was a workshop on “learning communities” (a current buzzword in academia). The presenter was Juan Carlos Huerta, the director of learning communities at UT Corpus Christi. Through a hands-on, clearly developed explanation of the process, I think I now have a very good idea of how to integrate this into future teaching. Hopefully, I can try it out in the near future in an interdisciplinary course, perhaps a field school?

I would highly encourage other political scientists to consider attending the conference in the future. Yes, it’s less “rigorous” than the APSA annual meeting. But you do get a chance to meet some interesting folk who have good ideas about teaching. If nothing else, it’s a good chance to network in small setting & pick up tips to make your teaching better (which also means “easier”—providing more time to do research rather than pull your hair out over problems in the classroom).

My paper was well received. I want to significantly rewrite it, of course. But it’s basically a manifesto & attempt at a practical guide on how to do research methods “across the curriculum” (in social sciences generally). But I’ll leave that for some other time.