Abstract
This chapter describes strategies for professors at teaching-intensive institutions to remain research-active by integrating our research into our courses as well as students into our research. Specifically, I focus on two approaches: The first concerns the integration of scholarly work into lesson plans, such as inviting research methods students to “find the independent variable” in research we publish or designing course experiences that require us to review current literature in the field as part of our preparation. The second strategy utilizes students as a source of data for classroom activities. My students complete surveys in which they respond to a variety of questions and participate in a range of experiments that serve as the basis for class activities throughout the term (e.g., evaluating the attitudinal impact of a framing experiment utilizing various media cues). These exercises are authentic, engaging, and regarded by students as productive avenues for conveying the substance of political science. There is no doubt that life at a teaching-intensive institution does not always afford adequate time for research activities. However, we should consider this arrangement an opportunity, not merely a constraint: our research can serve our teaching, and our students can serve our research.
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, instructors are often called upon to teach service courses beyond their disciplinary expertise, as well, especially at teaching-intensive institutions.
- 2.
I have found students (usually!) enjoy a joke that no, I am not paid every time the article is downloaded, so the reason I’m assigning them my own work is simply because I know it well. Incidentally, this crack has on more than one occasion inspired questions from students genuinely curious to know more about the publication process.
- 3.
The embedded link did not direct students to the website hosting the article. Instead, I created a copy of the article without logos, names, etc. in a .PDF and placed it in a Google Drive. This file also included exam-specific instructions and information that was not included in the original article. The link in the final exam document opened the .PDF, ensuring students wouldn’t be distracted by ads or attempt to mimic formatting decisions by the website that published the article.
- 4.
Of course, individuals should consult their departmental standards when selecting publication opportunities to ensure that energies expended in writing efforts will be worthwhile as far as performance evaluations are concerned. Indeed, articles like these are not necessary going to make or break a tenure case, but it is worth noting that teaching-intensive universities are often willing to recognize these types of works as qualified publications.
- 5.
It is important to be strategic about course selection, especially as a newer faculty member. For instance, if an instructor were initially assigned three unique class preparations (preps) spread over four separate courses, it may not be in the new faculty member’s best interest to propose a fourth unique prep that semester to replace a section of one of the others. In addition, some institutions will assign introductory courses to new hires in order to help them develop their pedagogical style or simply to lighten their load, so it is important to consult with senior colleagues and/or the department chair about expectations and opportunities related to research-relevant course offerings.
- 6.
Incidentally, inviting students to review surveys or other documents that will be viewed by research participants also helps identify typos, grammatical missteps, and, in the case of digital surveys, logic/programming errors. Indeed, students take good-hearted but very real pleasure in catching their instructors’ mistakes!
- 7.
This observation also informed my decision to have students design and field their own survey experiments as part of our course.
- 8.
Note that since this was an introductory course, I simplified the graphic to exclude certain statistics like the margin of error and confidence level. The goal here was to illustrate source cue effects conceptually, rather than statistical elements like average treatment effects. Those come later in our research methods sequence.
- 9.
Grading papers is one example of a teaching activity that may not offer much in the way of research or service applications.
References
Loepp, E. (2019). Data-based teaching: An introduction and call for collaboration. PS: Political Science & Politics, 52(4), 743‒748. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096519000568
Loepp, E. (2018). Beyond polls: Using student data to stimulate learning. Journal of Political Science Education, 14(1), 17–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2017.1359094
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Loepp, E. (2023). Creating Positive Feedback Cycles Between Teaching and Research. In: Butcher, C., Bhasin, T., Gordon, E., Hallward, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Teaching and Research in Political Science. Political Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42887-6_29
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