Author: Emily Farris, Texas Christian University
I am a syllabus and teaching resources hoarder. If you open my Dropbox folder system, you’ll see way too many documents of syllabi and teaching ideas from various folks over the years. I’m a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel when it comes to teaching resources.
One of those resources I use in a lot of different ways is Dr. Julia Marin Hellwege’s coursepack for her majors section of American Government at the University of South Dakota. She has generously shared a copy of it through google docs here. I love that it includes a weekly checklist, terminology and concepts, response questions, and often a class activity.
For example, for week 7 on the legislative branch, she has a list of readings that include some public scholarship from the MonkeyCage and a chapter from Fenno’s Home Style. She sets up the class activity of “How a Bill becomes a Law” through a fun sounding board game and has an infographic assignment. Each week has a rich set of ideas that could enrich your class.
She also includes all the tools necessary for her semester-long Civic Engagement project, which she recently wrote up in the Journal of Political Science Education in “Left to Their Own Devices: A Student-Centered Approach to Civic Engagement.”
These are impressive resources that she kindly shares for free! Thanks Julia!
