I am developing a hybrid version of my course, Introduction to Political Theory (PS 206).\u00a0 This is a fairly standard course, taught on most college and university campuses across the country.\u00a0 There are typically \u00a0two main ways of organizing the class.\u00a0 One is a chronologically-organized “greatest hits” approach, where the students get a brief exposure to the main thinkers in the Western canon, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, etc.\u00a0 The other way is to organize the course thematically, by issue or topic–and then bring in historical figures as they bear on the topic at hand.\u00a0 I favor this latter approach: I start with questions like, why have a state? Do we have an obligation to obey the law?\u00a0 What kind of state do we want to have–and in particular should it be democratic?\u00a0 We then turn to issues about what the state should do–mainly with respect to distributive justice and questions of rights, liberty, and toleration.\u00a0 Finally, we think about political issues beyond the state–global distributive justice, international norms, etc.\u00a0 The students in the course tend to be a mix of political science majors and students taking the course to fill a Western Civilization distribution requirement.<\/p>\n
So how to do this course as a hybrid, where we will meet only once a week for a couple of hours, and make up the rest of the time online?\u00a0 Part of the answer, I think, must be to expose the students, outside of the classroom, to video material where political theory is discussed and\/or debated.\u00a0 There are some very good options available for this, two of the most prominent of which are the Open Yale Courses offered by Steven Smith and Ian Shapiro, both first-rate political theorists.\u00a0 (See http:\/\/oyc.yale.edu\/political-science<\/a>.) Smith takes the chronological approach, while Shapiro’s is more thematic.\u00a0 Either would work well, but I have decided to build my course around Michael Sandel’s course on Justice at Harvard.\u00a0 His course is extremely popular (900 undergrads sign up for it every year at Harvard), and Sandel is an excellent teacher.\u00a0 PBS even made a series based on the course, and the series provides the video content.\u00a0\u00a0This means that they have excellent production values.\u00a0 Sandel’s book, Justice, contains chapters that mirror the organization of the course, so I’ll be using that as the main text for the class.\u00a0 In addition, the\u00a0class covers many of the topics I like to cover in my Intro course, and the website (http:\/\/www.justiceharvard.org\/<\/a>) includes discussion questions, supplemental readings, etc.\u00a0 Frankly, using the Sandel website is going to save me a lot of work–but even more important, the quality of the material and its “fit” with what I like to do anyway in my Intro course is just excellent.\u00a0 It is a good way, I think, to get my feet wet in the hybrid pool.\u00a0 (Sorry–bad metaphor?)<\/p>\n I am still working out some of the nuts and bolts of the course.\u00a0 Right now my plan is that, for each of the nine modules (essentially, each week), I will have students read a chapter of the book, read the additional (primary) sources, watch the corresponding video lectures, take a quiz, and participate in an online discussion.\u00a0 I am hoping that the latter will help set the agenda for our time together in class–it will tell me, I hope, what the students found interesting, confusing, etc.\u00a0 I am thinking that, for the first time in my career, I will walk into class without any lecture notes at all–to try to get myself out of the mindset that I should be lecturing.\u00a0 I may plan some in-class activities, but mostly I just want to use class time to have an interesting discussion of all of the material that the students will have been exposed to in various forms.\u00a0\u00a0In some ways it will remain a conventional class: I will assign papers and there will be a final exam.\u00a0 But I hope that this experiement\u00a0both will\u00a0shake up my approach to teaching, which hasn’t changed much in twenty years, and will appeal to this generation of students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am developing a hybrid version of my course, Introduction to Political Theory (PS 206).\u00a0 This is a fairly standard course, taught on most college and university campuses across the country.\u00a0 There are typically \u00a0two main ways of organizing the … Continue reading