Planning for Spring 2021
For students looking for information on Spring 2021, here’s where things are now…
As of today, I’m scheduled to teach Gov. 50 (Public Admin) and Gov. 65 (Public Opinion).* So let’s talk about plans for those courses. We should know in early December — December 9th or so — whether there will be an on-campus option in Spring 2021. As with planning for Fall 2020, what makes sense is to plan for an online program while having some idea of how to shift some of it on campus in the event we are able to do some in-person things. We are, I think, getting better at this: remote teaching 2.0 this fall was a lot better than the hurried emergency-basis remote teaching 1.0 of Spring 2020. Of course, there is a lot to learn from our experiences this term too.
I am very proud, first of all, of my students in Gov. 20 (Intro American) and Gov. 116 (Public Policy Process) — they have done such a great job this term adapting to the challenging circumstances that come with Covid-19 and remote learning. As always, though, while I could not wish for better students, I can certainly think of some things to do differently in designing my courses. This outlines some of what I have learned so far.
What has gone well:
Having some synchronous component for conversation. It’s nice to see people, and to see people in small groups. In general, I tried to schedule as much of the synchronous component in the regular course time slot as possible. In my Gov. 20 course, I had a number of students with significant time-zone differences; I am offering an alternative time for those students, and will consider doing so again next term if I have the demand for it.
Using the Forum feature on Sakai. I think I will probably do even more of this next term, although I may change some things about how I do it.
Producing my classes as “podcasts.” I think it is good for students to get out and away from their computers. The “lecture” component will really be something students can listen to while out taking a walk.
What needs the most work:
Cutting down on the number of things, course components, tasks, buttons to click. I’ve heard this from a lot of students: many courses innovated by making a lot of neat stuff. Individually, this might be fine; as a whole, though, it is just too much. I’ll do my part to make the courses simpler and easier to manage.
A slightly more realistic production schedule. The podcasts take a long time to make. Preparing each week of class is taking about twice as long as preparing to teach in person. So a more realistic schedule will be better for everybody.
So both courses will broadly have these components. I’ll get some more feedback from my current students before finalizing spring plans. Still: lecture delivered as podcasts; focused small-group discussions; and regular whole-group asynchronous discussion online that can include discussion of current events.
Gov. 50 and Gov. 65 are very different types of courses. Gov. 50 (public administration) is a very reading-intensive course; I ask students to read the whole of The Power Broker. It’s a real epic. Students have typically told me that this was their favorite part of the course, as well it should be: it is one of the greatest books of all time about politics. It’s a classic lectures-readings-discussion-papers course, and as such is well-suited to having significant asynchronous components. Gov. 65 (public opinion) is a course that includes (but is not limited to) learning a lot of technical material — more or less, how to analyze survey data in Stata. That course will operate on more of a “problem-set/project” basis. Students often need a lot more synchronous individual help (“what is wrong with my code?”) with that material. So the structure of each course will differ a little bit, while sharing many of the same common elements that seem to be part of a reasonable response to these circumstances.
I haven’t made a new syllabus yet for either one. I want to see a bit more of how this current term works, and to get a lot more feedback from my current students, before committing to a final plan for the spring. But that’s the basic idea, and I hope it will give you some general sense of my approach. If you have more questions, feel free to get in touch using my college email (asinclair at cmc dot edu).
Warm regards —
A.S.
* I may end up on a research leave in either Spring 2021 or Spring 2022. If I am teaching in Spring 2021, then I likely won’t be in Spring 2022 (and the reverse); if you want to take either of these classes, you may want to take that into account, and take it when it is available. If you have questions about this, just shoot me an email.
[UPDATE POSTED: SEE POST ABOVE FROM 11/8/20]