Department of Political Science

THE TEACHING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

POLI 380

Professor Joel Schwartz

I. Course Goals:

This course has a short-term and a long-term goal. The first is to prepare you to be an effective and successful instructor in carrying out your teaching responsibilities here at UNC.

The second and far more important goal is to help you help yourself to obtain the skills that will make you an effective teacher throughout your career.

II. Required Texts

UNC Center for Teaching and Learning. Teaching at Carolina Handout

For Your Consideration; Short teaching Monographs from Center for Teaching and Learning Handout

Joseph Lowman, Mastering the Techniques of Teaching Purchase

Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching Purchase

Handout "Graduate Students and the Teaching Portfolio"

III. Grading

Students' grades will be determined by my evaluation of the quality of your required work.

IV. Graded Requirements

The most important and most heavily weighted requirement will be the quality of your course syllabus which must be submitted at the last meeting of the seminar.

The quality of the student participatory exercise that you will design and then execute with your classmates in the seminar.

The quality of the mini- lecture (15 minutes) which you will deliver to the class.

The quality of your teaching portfolio which must be submitted at the last meeting of the seminar.

V. Non-Graded Requirements

Students teaching their own class will be video-taped and observed periodically.

Students not teaching their own independent courses will observe either an experienced or advanced graduate student instructor or a faculty instructor.

Faculty-taught classes observed by students may be video-taped for subsequent class discussions.

DETAILED COURSE CONTENT BY WEEKS