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This article was downloaded by: [North West University] On: 21 December 2014, At: 07:41 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Political Science Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upse20 Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects Victoria C. Williams a a Alvernia College Published online: 24 Feb 2007. To cite this article: Victoria C. Williams (2006) Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects, Journal of Political Science Education, 2:2, 171-186 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512160600669015 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects

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Page 1: Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects

This article was downloaded by: [North West University]On: 21 December 2014, At: 07:41Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Political Science EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upse20

Assuming Identities, EnhancingUnderstanding: Applying Active LearningPrinciples to Research ProjectsVictoria C. Williams aa Alvernia CollegePublished online: 24 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Victoria C. Williams (2006) Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding:Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects, Journal of Political Science Education, 2:2,171-186

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15512160600669015

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects

Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding:Applying Active Learning Principles to

Research Projects

VICTORIA C. WILLIAMS

Alvernia College

This paper describes a pedagogical technique employed for an interdisciplinarycourse on Cold War America. Students had to ‘become’ a fictional person and dis-cuss how political and social changes during the Cold War era would have impactedthat person. By doing a semester-long project that required primary source research,this ‘quasi-experiential’ technique helped students gain a greater appreciation forCold War culture and a more thorough understanding of the major political eventsof the era.

Keywords active learning, Cold War, research projects, role play

What would it be like to be a 15-year-old black girl living in Little Rock, Arkansas in1950? Or a hippie in California during the Vietnam war? What about a Republicanstaffer in the Nixon administration in the days following Watergate? When I wantedmy students to learn about Cold War history and politics, I was concerned aboutmore than just the major domestic and international events of the time. I wantedthem to understand how the events of the Cold War helped shape American culture.Facing a number of pedagogical challenges, I designed a semester-long quasi-experiential learning project that required students to ‘‘become’’ fictional historicalcharacters. During the course of the semester, students had to assume the identityof their character, researching how political and social changes would have impactedtheir character. They were required to turn in four projects that incorporatedresearch from primary sources, principally magazines and newspapers. Through thistask, students engaged American political and cultural history in a way thatenhanced their understanding of the Cold War era. In this paper, I illustrate how this‘‘quasi-experiential’’ technique can help achieve learning outcomes in politicalscience courses.

I teach at small private college with an undergraduate enrollment of about 1800students. In the Spring of 2004 I taught an honors course on Cold War America, aninterdisciplinary course that fulfilled elective credit in political science or history.I wanted to encourage class discussion, to force students to do research that requiredusing primary source material, and to enable students to emerge with an in-depth

The author wishes to thank the participants in the Experiential Learning Track for theirfeedback and comments. I also wish to thank the JPSE editors and two anonymous reviewersfor their helpful suggestions.

Address correspondence to Victoria Williams, Alvernia College, 400 Saint Bernardine St.,Reading, PA 19607. E-mail: [email protected]

Journal of Political Science Education, 2:171–186, 2006Copyright # 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1551-2169DOI: 10.1080/15512160600669015

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appreciation of the subject. The course was offered at the 200-level and presumedonly elementary background knowledge of Cold War history or politics. The goalof the course was to both investigate the structure and reality of American-Sovietpolitical relations from 1945–1991 and to gain a broader sense of American cultureduring this time period. As stated on the syllabus, the content goals of the coursewere three-fold: 1) Students will be able to discuss some of the differences betweenCold War culture and contemporary culture; 2) Students will be able to appreciatethe reality of day-to-day life during the Cold War; and 3) Students will be able totalk intelligently about the significant domestic and international political eventsof the time period.

Several pedagogical issues also needed to be addressed. The first is a universalproblem: Students are reluctant to do research if they cannot type a phrase into anInternet search engine and find an answer. Primary documents and library researchare rarely used. I wanted to find an interesting way to utilize historical documents.The second challenge is more likely faced by professors at small schools: I encoun-ter the same students almost every semester. In the Cold War course, 14 of the 17students enrolled in the class had taken at least one class from me previously. Itypically run discussion-oriented classes, and therefore I had a good understandingof the skills and aptitudes, interests, and political opinions of almost every studentin the class prior to the beginning of the semester. I wanted to make the classinteresting, to increase the diversity of opinions, and not be able to anticipatewhat the papers would be like before I had even read them. A third challengewas integrating political science and history into a course that would hold theattention of nonmajors. As an honors course, half of the students were neitherpolitical science nor history majors but were taking the course to fulfill an honorsrequirement. My solution to addressing these three issues was to incorporatequasi-experiential learning as a primary component of the course. I call it ‘‘quasi-experiential’’ because, while students were not out actually experiencing the life ofothers in this historical time period, they were required to use their imaginationand resources from the period to ‘‘live’’ the experiences of a fictional, but histori-cally accurate, character.

Two pedagogical tools helped frame the project: simulation=role playing andproblem-based learning. Although it remains highly anecdotal, the evidence on thevalue of simulations and role playing is generally positive (van Ments 1989, 21,25; but see Gosen and Washbush 2004). Students who are placed in these situationsfind themselves forced to understand the motives, goals, and limitations of the char-acters. Similarly, problem-based learning, in which students are required to investi-gate solutions to ambiguous, open-ended questions, has wide popularity as aneffective technique to teach critical thinking. These two techniques are part of thelarger ‘‘active learning’’ approach to teaching. Active learning includes everythingfrom in-class discussion and debate to simulations (including role-playing activities),case studies, problem-based learning, and out-of-class experiences such as intern-ships, service learning, and field trips. According to Smith and Boyer (1996), makingstudents more active in the learning process helps encourage critical thinking andanalytical skills and gives students a deeper level of insight into political processeswhile helping them retain knowledge (693). Playing different roles also helps encour-age students to understand a variety of perspectives and opinions, potentiallyincreasing tolerance and awareness of cultural diversity (Dougherty 2003, 240–241).Perhaps one of the most generally agreed upon outcome of simulations and related

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active learning techniques is that they help make learning fun (Smith and Boyer1996; Jefferson 1999, 589; Bonwell and Eison 1991). Newmann and Twigg (2000)concur with that finding and posit that active learning reaches students who havea variety of learning styles while ‘‘bringing the textbook to life’’ (835).

I integrated the techniques of simulations and problem-based learning by havingstudents adopt the role of a character and then have to respond to the open-endedquestion of how that character’s life would be impacted by the political and socialevents of the Cold War.

Although this assignment was not a traditional simulation, it had many of thecharacteristics of such exercises. Like simulations, it sought to mirror real-worldsituations and help students understand the constraints and motivations of ‘‘realplayers.’’ Also, as in traditional simulations, students were engaged in a variety ofactivities, including research, writing, creative thinking, organizing information, cre-ating presentations, and oral discussions of their findings (Josefson and Casey 2000,843).

This project differs from many role-playing exercises by requiring students toparticipate in the exercise all semester, but yet it was not as intense as some sem-ester-long simulations (or some problem-based learning case-based classes) in thatit was not the entire focus of the class. Since it was set up as a research project, mostof what students did took place outside of class, and the project retained academicrigor because it required a large amount of research and writing, just like a typicalresearch paper. Only certain days were devoted to ‘‘role playing’’ where studentsbrought their characters into the class discussion. Unlike most simulations, charac-ters only interacted with each other during the in-class discussions. While studentshave subsequently said that they joked with each other outside of class about gettinginvolved in each other’s ‘‘lives,’’ none of the characters they created did so. Thus,students were only a part of the same ‘‘case’’ in that they ‘‘lived’’ during the sametime period

Apart from the ongoing project, the course itself was run fairly traditionally.The two main texts were selections of critical essays and primary documents onpolitical aspects of the Cold War, and supplementary reserve readings wererequired on social topics such as the growth of suburbia, the government’splutonium tests, the rise of rock ‘n roll, the role of women, and the paranoia ofthe Red Scare. The vast majority of class periods were devoted to a mixture oflecture on domestic and international political events and class discussion on theassigned readings, and exam material came from lectures and readings. I alsoshowed some of the excellent films available on the era: Atomic Cafe, RadioBikini, Civil Defense: The War at Home, Kennedy’s Cold War, and (of course)Dr. Strangelove. Only four of the class periods were designed for in-characterdiscussion (one at the end of each approximately decade of the Cold War, corre-sponding to the four projects they had to submit).

This project required inquiry-guided learning, as each new project demandedstudents to investigate the cultural and political realities to determine a path for theircharacter. It also enabled students to apply disciplinary concepts to ‘‘real’’ life situa-tions. By forcing students to place themselves in the shoes of others, and to create anentire lifetime of story line, students needed to be able to analyze how political andhistorical events would have impacted their characters. By creating their own narra-tives, students gained a new appreciation for the historical, political, and culturalrealities of the era.

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The Logistics of the Project

Prior to the first day of class I wrote short descriptions of 20 characters. The char-acters spanned the spectrum of American society, including black and white, privi-leged and disadvantaged, educated and uneducated, military and civilian. Somehad clear links to the political establishment (they were elected officials or desiredto be); others were seemingly far removed from political power. The charactersranged in age—some were middle-aged in 1945, others had not even been bornyet. For those characters who were not born by 1945, the student had to createthe story of the parent or relative of their assigned character.

On the first day of class, students randomly selected characters, which they werenot allowed to change. While I did not want to ‘‘box’’ students in with overly restric-tive or detailed character descriptions, I also did not want to give them completefreedom to literally create a character from scratch. I created characters I hopedwould lead to interesting class discussions by providing a variety of viewpointsand perspectives. Many characters were created with specific events in mind thatmight have impacted them (Vietnam, race riots, the debate over birth control andwomen’s lib, school desegregation, or Watergate), with the hope that students wouldrecognize the importance of these events to their characters as the decades unfolded.Here are three examples of the character assignments (see appendix for moreexamples):

Male. In 1945, a 35-year-old Representative from New Mexico, site of thenuclear tests and Los Alamos laboratory. Proponent of nuclear war andthe necessity of nuclear weapons. A Republican who has aspirations ofbecoming president someday.Female, 27 in 1945, a white high school social studies teacher in an urbanschool in Little Rock, Arkansas. Married, 2 children, ages 5 and 7. Hus-band is a local politician. Active in the Southern Baptist church.World War II veteran. 21 upon return in 1945. Army air corps, spent timein army running bombing raids over Germany. Got married when youenlisted in 1941; your son was born while you were away (he’s three yearsold now). Your wife and son live with her parents in the Northeast. Sheworked for the Women’s Army Corp while you were in the war and wroteyou letters faithfully.

Students had a broad degree of latitude in how to tell a character’s story (seeappendix for project guidelines). Recognizing that students have individual prefer-ences and learning styles, flexibility was built into the assignment to enable studentsto tailor the assignment to their own strengths. They could write research-stylepapers, take a more ‘‘creative-writing’’ approach, do scrapbooks or journals, lettersor art work or songs. Further, they were able to focus more narrowly on particularissues, events, or years that most intrigued them, provided it was plausible that theircharacter would be interested in or affected by the events.

Students were required to turn in four projects, corresponding with the time per-iods as they were broken up on the syllabus: 1945–1953; 1954–1963; 1964–1978;1979–1992. They had to trace the life of their character throughout the Cold Wartime period. I developed grading guidelines to help students understand the expecta-tions of the project and also to help me keep grading consistent despite the variety in

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the types of projects I received. All projects were required to demonstrate researchusing primary sources.

The overarching goal of the project was to help students gain an appreciation forthe culture of the Cold War. Popular magazines are both molders and reflectors ofculture; therefore I decided that they would be the primary resource I required stu-dents to use for their projects. Magazines were used as a tool for understandingpopular values and morals, desires and expectations, and available options facingtheir characters. Our local public library had a more extensive collection than thecollege did, so students were required to access the public library’s collection, orto borrow from my private collection. Reading magazines such as Ladies’ HomeJournal, McCall’s, Newsweek, Time, Ms., Ebony, Life, and Look, students saw howthe political and social events discussed in class played out in day-to-day life as it wasreflected in contemporary magazines. In this way they gained a greater appreciationfor what the world was like for Americans during the Cold War. In their projects,students used pictures photocopied from magazines to show wedding dresses,houses, washing machines, new cars, fashions, and other aspects of the culture thattheir characters would have lived in. It made it easier for them to ‘‘become’’ a charac-ter because they could more concretely envision the surroundings and consumergoods available during that time. Looking at the advertisements and reading the arti-cles also gave students a more complete idea of the cultural values and mores.

Although there are, of course, Cold War resources available online, I purposelytried to avoid sending students to these resources. I wanted them to have the experi-ence of going to the library and thumbing through the magazines, and not just seeingwhat someone else decided was interesting enough to put online. Further, some ofthe most informative pieces of the magazine would not make it online—the pull-out advertisements for business schools or the small advertisement in the corner ofa page for a one-way train ticket to the land of opportunity—California. I wantedstudents to use the magazines to gain an overall sense of the culture, not to readone specific article or to see one particular advertisement.

Learning Outcomes and Student Assessment

There were several desired learning outcomes for the course. First, I wanted studentsto learn about the politics and international relations of the time period. Theirknowledge of these events was primarily assessed through the midterm and finalexams. Second, I wanted students to gain an appreciation of the culture of the time.This was assessed through their projects and through their in-class, in-character dis-cussions. Third, I wanted students to learn how to use primary documents as histori-cal artifacts—these magazines told a story of the history in a way that textbooks donot. This outcome was assessed through their projects and in-class discussions.

I devoted several class periods to in-character discussion of certain issues. We satin a circle and introduced each character, and students talked a little about their pro-ject for that decade. Students enjoyed hearing about each other, and it encouragedstudents to be punctual with their work. The issues we discussed were relations withthe Soviets and thoughts on Communism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, school desegre-gation, Vietnam, Watergate, relations with China, and the Olympic boycott. Stu-dents were evaluated on the quantity and quality of their participation and ontheir ability to accurately reflect how their character might feel about the topic.

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Project grades were based on five criteria: historical accuracy, depth of culturalappreciation=understanding, integration of historical events into the storyline, use ofresources, and creativity of presentation and storyline. Students were creative in thetypes of projects they submitted. Students turned in journals and diaries, letters to‘‘relatives,’’ and family albums. One student’s character wrote articles in a companynewsletter that also highlighted contemporary issues of the day, such as theThree Mile Island nuclear plant crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or thediscovery of Saturn’s rings for the project on the last decade. Another handed in a‘‘newspaper’’ in which her character had written a letter to the editor; other articleshighlighted the major events of the day. Students used ‘‘scrapbooks’’ where theycollected articles that their characters would have found interesting—a gay maleactor filled his with pictures of Rock Hudson and other male actors, complete withreviews of their latest movies. One student created a ‘‘family newsletter,’’ completewith pictures of the family and tales of their adventures. Another student handedin a fifth grade project entitled ‘‘all about me,’’ in which the character listedher favorite things (such as Care Bears and the Cosby Show) and some major newsarticles of the day (such as the Challenger explosion) with her thoughts on thestories. Others simply wrote narratives about their character’s lives, mostly in firstperson.

Students were creative in the directions their characters took, as well. One stu-dent had her character, a military officer stationed in Korea, fall in love and havean affair with a Korean woman. The woman became pregnant, and he paid forher to go to California where she lived with her daughter. He stayed in his unhappymarriage on the East Coast, making trips to California to see his ‘‘other’’ family.When he died, the daughter picked up the storyline. Another man, a senator, wasdiscovered to be a spy for the Soviets and spent the rest of his life in jail spoutingMarxist jargon about the evils of capitalism and worldwide revolution. Others led‘‘ordinary’’ lives, such as the 16-year-old girl who marries her high school sweet-heart, moves to the suburbs, and raises her children, always worried about theSoviets dropping the bomb. Regardless of the way they chose to tell the story, stu-dents embraced their created characters and really brought them to ‘‘life.’’

Challenges

There were, of course, some aspects of the project that students complained about.Students found it difficult to get to the off-campus library to use the primary sources,and a few complained that photocopying cost money. Several students said that theydid not have good imaginations and found the project time-consuming because theyhad to create a fictional person’s life. This turned out to be sort of a mixed blessing,however. Some of the students who considered themselves ‘‘unimaginative’’ endedup calling their parents and grandparents and asking them about their lives duringthe Cold War. Several used old photographs of their relatives, or old documents suchas telegrams or postcards that were from the family. One white student, who hadbeen assigned the character of a young black man in an all-black army regiment,actually went online and tracked down a former member of the regiment and spenthours on the phone asking him about his life and his experiences and used that asthe basis of his project. Despite the students’ self-perceptions, they were not lessimaginative; they were just using their imaginations in different ways than I hadanticipated.

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I found a few challenges in this project. The first involved primary sources. I knewthat I wanted students to get a feel for the era by looking at magazines, and I knewthat they did not have much experience with using primary documents, but I failed tobuild a ‘‘how-to’’ session into the course. After receiving their first projects, however,I realized that they really did not know how to use the magazines as an artifact. Wespent an entire class period looking through the magazines and finding good culturalreferences and examples of things they could use, which greatly improved their abilityto utilize these resources. A related challenge was that sometimes students simplyphotocopied articles or advertisements and submitted them without significant com-mentary or putting them in context for the character. This is something that could beoffset by more clearly explaining how I wanted them to use the sources.

The second challenge was the variety of projects that I received. I was delightedby the creativity, but it made comparative grading more difficult. I found thatI particularly enjoyed stories with an interesting twist or unexpected event. Some stu-dents were better than others at creating characters that really seemed alive, delvinginto emotions and nuances of character. Similarly, some students produced beauti-fully creative and different types of projects each time, while others stayed with amore traditional research-style paper for all four projects. My grading guidelineshelped ensure comparable grading, but I was glad that I had those guidelines andwas prepared for the variety of student work.

The third challenge was finding enough time in the semester. I had envisionedmore time for class discussion ‘‘in character,’’ but trying to cover so much materiallimited the time we devoted to those types of discussion. In retrospect, I would try todo more of it, since student comments showed that they liked doing it, found it help-ful and wished we had done more of it. Also, I had built in the ability to tinker withthe characters’ lives but ultimately did not do so. I had really built that into the pro-ject more as a safeguard, if I saw a character getting too ‘‘off-track,’’ but no studentproject seemed to call for such intervention.

Course and Project Assessment

Students attested that the project helped achieve the expected learning outcomes ofthe course. Student perception and satisfaction of the course were assessed throughthe college-required student feedback forms, and a specific questionnaire on the pro-ject itself. Student feedback on the course was highly positive on the college-wideform, with scores ranging from 1.06 to 1.41 on a 1–5 scale where one is ‘‘stronglyagree’’ and five is ‘‘strongly disagree.’’1 When asked to comment on the best aspectsof the course, 11 out of 12 students who responded to the question answered thatthe project was enjoyable, useful, and helpful in understanding the coursematerial. When asked to comment on the aspects of the course that could useimprovement, no one mentioned anything related to the design or content of theproject. In fact, a few students wrote that they wished we had devoted more timeto in-class, in-character discussions.

I designed an open-ended questionnaire to more specifically ascertain the stu-dents’ perception of the project itself. The questionnaire was handed out with thetake-home final so that students could turn both in at the same time. In the question-naire, I asked questions that reflected some of the learning objectives, such aswhether the project helped them understand the time periods in a way they otherwisewould not have, whether they found working with the magazines interesting and

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helpful, and what they found most enjoyable about the project. I also asked ques-tions that would help me decide what I should change if I were to adopt a similarapproach in the future, such as whether the students found the grading guidelineshelpful and whether they enjoyed being randomly assigned to their characters.Again, the feedback here was highly positive, with students saying that they foundthe character assignments challenging but helpful. Students were divided on the ran-dom assignment of characters, seeing both benefits and drawbacks to the approach.Students commented that, despite the amount of work required, projects were pref-erable to quizzes on each section of the course.

In July of 2005, I administered a postcourse survey to specifically assess the pro-ject’s value as a pedagogical tool.2 Such an evaluation is not only interesting andhelpful, it is, judging by the literature at least, exceedingly rare. However, like othereducators, political science professors increasingly are being called upon to provideevidence of student learning outcomes. Most of the literature on active or experien-tial learning, simulations, case studies, and similar pedagogical techniques touts thevalue of such approaches, but evidence of their effectiveness remains mostly anec-dotal. As Cooke (1986) illustrates, there are many difficulties in assessing learningoutcomes, and especially in trying to compare various pedagogical techniques(110–114). One of the most obvious ways of trying to assess the value of differenttechniques, establishing a ‘‘control’’ group, is simply not an option for professorsat small schools (and, for a variety of obvious reasons, is usually not scientificallyreliable even at large schools).3

The survey I administered asked students specifically to assess the role of theproject in achieving learning outcomes (See Table 1). The questionnaire reliedprimarily on scaled questions, with 1 being the highest or best and 5 being the lowestor worst response.

Table 1. Postcourse survey results

‘‘How well did the project help achieve the following learning objectives. . .?’’Making the course more interesting 1.2Students will be able to discuss some of the differences between Cold War

culture and contemporary culture� 1.4Giving a broader ‘feel’ for the Cold War culture 1.4Analyzing the time period 1.5Engaging in critical thinking about how political events impact individuals 1.5Students will be able to appreciate the reality of day-to-day life during the

Cold War� 1.7Helping understand the significance of major political events on day-to-day

life 1.7Making the course more challenging 1.8Students will be able to talk intelligently about the significant domestic and

international political events of the time period� 2.0Examining political events from a variety of viewpoints 1.9Making the class accessible to non-majors 1.9i

Engaging in critical thinking about diverse viewpoints 2.0Helping students become familiar with the use of primary documents 2.9

�indicates the desired content learning outcomes explicitly stated on the syllabus.i Interestingly, the response was a 1.3 for those in the class who actually were nonmajor.

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As is clear from the data, students found the project interesting, challenging, andeye-opening. It provided a good ‘‘laboratory’’ to explore the ideas presented in lec-ture and in the texts and succeeded to ‘‘bringing the textbook to life.’’ Students feltthat they were required to think critically, they gained an understanding of howpolitical events impact individuals, and they felt that the project helped them gaina better ‘‘feel’’ for the period. The lowest response came on whether the projecthelped students become familiar with the use of primary documents. It is possiblethat students do not fully know what ‘‘primary documents’’ are (the margin responseby one student would indicate this possibility), but this also may point to one of thechallenges that I described above—I needed to prepare students more to be able toadequately do the type of research I envisioned, and they found it frustrating to haveto go to the off-campus library to do the work.

The highest response, a 1.2, came to the question of whether the project madethe class more interesting. Studies show that interest in a subject is a major incen-tive to learning and helps with knowledge retention. For example, one student said,‘‘the journal gave me a lot of incentive to want to obtain a lot of sources sinceI was extremely interested in knowing how my character would be=act during thistime in history,’’ and another commented that the project was helpful ‘‘becauseI became interested in the topics and how I could tie them to my character.’’ Ifnothing else, interest in the subject prompts students to do the assignments, toask interesting questions, and to show up to class, which makes the environmentmore conducive to promoting higher-level thinking skills and in-depth study ofissues.

In addition to the questions above, I also asked two other quantitativequestions—‘‘compared to other college courses you have taken, how well do youremember the material from this course’’, and ‘‘how much of a role does the projectplay in helping you remember material from this course?’’ The response to bothquestions was a 2.2, which, while still good, is lower than I would have hoped (weall want students to remember everything we teach them!). Without comparativedata from a nonactive learning course, it is difficult to put that number into perspec-tive, but it at least does not provide strong support for the argument that activelearning leads to longer-term knowledge retention.

I asked several open-ended questions. They were asked to talk about three thingsthey remembered best from the class and which of those things were tied to their pro-jects. I received a wide variety of topics in response to this question, including somestudents who said that they remembered other students’ projects. In response to thequestion ‘‘did the project help you understand the Cold War better or differentlythan you would have if the course had just been lecture=reading=exam-based?,’’I received all affirmative replies. Most students talked about the value in viewingthe time period through a personal lens. Here are a sample of student commentson this question:

. ‘‘You were able to see how these people thought and how the Cold War reallyaffected how people thought and lived.’’

. ‘‘When you are stuck reading about a subject a lot of the time you get distracted ordon’t retain all of the information. With the project, it made us actually delve intothe era a little further to find out more about our characters.’’

. ‘‘It helped me to relate better to the topic and make it my own rather than justmemorizing facts and regurgitating information.’’

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. ‘‘It helped me experience the Cold War.’’

. ‘‘I understand the Cold War much better as a result of the project because it mademe feel as if I was living it instead of just learning about it.’’

. ‘‘There were many tiny topics that were involved in my project that I would haveoverlooked if it were just a lecture course.’’

. ‘‘It’s a lot more meaningful to actually create something than just taking notes andlistening.’’

Perhaps most reaffirming of the benefit of this type of project, when asked ‘‘wouldyou recommend that I adopt this method in the future or in other courses, or wouldyou want to see other professors adopt a similar technique,’’ again the universalanswer was yes.

Below is a sample of student comments on this question:

. ‘‘It allows students to explore their own creativity while integrating their charac-ters into situations that everyone would have faced.’’

. ‘‘Even though it is time-consuming and requires a lot of hard work it will encour-age the students to want to learn more. I honestly feel the students will be proud ofthe fact that THEY wrote a journal based on an important time in history.’’

. ‘‘I truly enjoyed the interviews I conducted and I still know a lot from it.’’

. ‘‘I thought it was a great thing being able to get ‘inside’ the mind of someone wholived back then.’’

. ‘‘It really was a method I enjoyed and it definitely made the class more interesting.It made the material easier to take in and more interesting to learn. Projects likethis make learning fun and help us dabble in our creative side, as well as enhancingour research, writing and critical thinking skills’’

. ‘‘I feel like it gave me a better understanding of the time period. Also, I rememberthe information. It’s not something I memorized for a midterm or final. It’s some-thing I absorbed and understand.’’

. ‘‘I loved the projects. I never had that much of a chance to be creative in any of myother classes, and it was a really good way to get involved in the way of life duringthat era. I liked going to the library to look at the older papers and such, eventhough many did not. Out of all my classes, this was my favorite.’’

. ‘‘Of course. It gives everybody the opportunity to be creative and use their stron-gest skill sets. Also it makes the course much more interesting and allows studentsto share what they have learned, and what they have learned might not always bepoints or things that the instructor has thought to bring up.’’

. ‘‘I definitely would love it if other classes employed your techniques becauseI learned so much and had fun. I was also happy to be able to really push myself.The course load was demanding without being stressful.’’

The results of the postcourse survey helped substantiate my conclusions about thevalue of this quasi-experiential approach as a learning tool. It gives me valuablefeedback about what students found most helpful in this approach and providessome evidence of where such pedagogical approaches can help achieve learningobjectives. While these are self-reported perceptions of the learning experience,4

they match what I observed in student performance on other measures of studentlearning, namely the research papers and projects that were produced through theexperience, the in-class discussions, and the performance on the two essay-styleexam.

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Conclusion

Students did very well in this course. Their knowledge of events and ability tosynthesize information and analyze events in broader historical contexts was testedand demonstrated on their exams. Their projects ranged from elaborate and creativeto well-researched and fact-filled. It was obvious that students had devoted largeamounts of time to their projects. Further, they commented that they enjoyed bring-ing their projects to class and having the time to ‘‘be’’ their characters in class.

I was delighted with the results of this project. It definitely overcame mypedagogical challenges: It forced students to use primary documents, enabled meto get a variety of interesting work and introduce many different opinions into theclass discussion and made the course accessible and interesting to both majors andnonmajors. It also achieved my learning objective of getting them to understandCold War culture and the impact of significant international and domestic eventson day-to-day life in America. In addition, the project helped with my honors courseobjectives of integrating the two disciplines, engaging in creative discourse andexamining events from disparate viewpoints. It forced students to engage in criticalthinking, as they had to really understand and to communicate how political eventsand cultural norms would have influenced their character. Further, as an addedbenefit, no students were ‘‘left out’’ of this project—all were engaged, interested,and participating.

Although this course was an interdisciplinary honors course, this ‘‘quasi-experiential’’ model could be translated into other political science courses (seeLarson 2004). Whenever active learning experiences are introduced into the class-room, it is essential that the activities are carefully designed to help achieve course-specific objectives. In my case, those included cultural awareness, historicalunderstanding, and the ability to compare two political eras. Thus this approachwould need to be carefully applied to meet the needs of each professor and maynot be applicable to all courses. Although it would be most easily adapted in smallclassrooms, with a little creativity it could even be adjusted to midsized ones—youcould have teams of people as each character, for instance. One could take theapproach of assigning characters to analyze a domestic public policy issue, havingstudents use contemporary ‘‘artifacts’’ such as newsletters or websites or televisionshows that would promote a particular viewpoint. Such exercises help students seeresearch as something intrinsically connected to the course, not as an irrelevant exer-cise. Imagining the life of ordinary citizens in foreign countries may also be effectivein having students understand the impact of foreign policy or economic issues. Toget the experience of ‘‘being’’ someone else helps broaden a student’s perspectiveon the world. While this experience does not replace alternative out of classroomexperiences such as internships or studying abroad, it can force students to thinkabout issues, events, and policies in ways that they are not accustomed to and arerarely required to do. Quasi-experiential learning assignments such as the projectdescribed here can increase student understanding and appreciation of differentcultures, eras, and lives.

Appendix: Cold War Project Guidelines

The year is 1945, and the United States has just accepted the Japanese surrender.World War II has officially ended, and, although most people don’t realize the

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change that will be happening in their lives, a new era has been entered: the AtomicAge. The Atomic Age will be dominated by the nuclear arms race and fear of nuclearwar, the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, theideological struggle of communism versus democracy, and dramatic social changesin the United States. This project will help you gain a greater appreciation forhow these events permeated the culture and impacted individual lives. This is anongoing, multipart project.

Overview of the Assignment

You will have to ‘‘become’’ a character. The character will be assigned to you, and youwill have to do cultural research to understand what the character saw and did, feltand cared about. You will have some latitude in determining the direction of thecharacter, but the assignments have been chosen to reflect the diversity of experiencesof Americans. You must remain faithful to that experience, as your character will rep-resent the broader experiences of the cultural subgroup of which he or she is a part.

The Projects

For each period we study you must turn in a paper or project that traces the devel-opments of the period and how they impact ‘‘you.’’ Your papers must be well-inte-grated works that reflect on more than just one episode or event, although if you canconvincingly argue that one event was most likely to resonate with your character(for instance, if your character gets sent off to Vietnam), then focusing on that is fine.The papers must be as long as you need to adequately reflect on the events in the lifeof your character and to give an in-depth feeling for what he or she is experiencingand thinking about the world around them. For at least the first paper, I will notspecify a page-length, because I want to give you flexibility in how you approachthe project and do not want to put constraints on your creativity.

Because the goal is for you to develop a sophisticated understanding of and feelfor the era, you are required to rely mostly on primary documents for informationand research. You are required to use magazines from the resources available atthe Reading Public Library (see attached). You should include the list of magazinesand articles (or any other interesting information you gathered) in a bibliography.You may also check out newspapers from the era (Reading Eagle or New YorkTimes). You may look at movies, listen to music, watch reruns of TV shows on Nickat Night, even read novels or books that reflect on the times. I have some resourcesthat you can borrow. You are encouraged to interview people who lived at that timeto ask them what they remember thinking or feeling. Look carefully at the pictures,advertisements, and language of the times. What do they tell you about ‘‘your’’ life?One thing you cannot do is avoid talking about the major cultural, scientific, polit-ical, or international events. Even though some characters may be more interested orcaught up in the dramatic events of the Cold War, every character should be inter-ested in what is going on and reflect on how it could impact their lives. Therefore,even if you don’t think your character would be reading Time magazine (forinstance), it should still be used as a resource for your paper. The only things I askin how you form your character’s life is that you a) be faithful to the times—whatwould have been the opportunities, challenges, obstacles, or expectations for thisperson on the basis of race, gender, or economic situation? If they do something that

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someone in that situation would not usually be able to do, what enables them to doso? b) be true to the character—if they’ve always been a pacifist and then suddenlyenlist in the army, that’s not a plausible storyline.

I have the ability to ‘‘interfere’’ with any character’s life at any time—I can addtwists and turns, like pregnancies or moves or job changes. As sad as it might seem,all characters die at age 60 unless I give you a ‘‘stay.’’ I can also chose to kill yourcharacter earlier. (You may not have your character commit suicide or be killedunless you warn me first and have a story-related=plausible reason.) If=when yourcharacter dies, you must ‘‘become’’ someone he or she knew or was related to—anarmy buddy, a spouse, a child, maybe even someone who s=he seemed tangentiallyrelated to, like a student, a neighbor, or someone else who his or her death may haveaffected. That new person must be young enough to ‘‘live’’ through the end of theCold War (i.e., they must not turn 60 before 1992). Choice of the replacementcharacter must be in consultation with me. If ‘‘you’’ have not been born as of1945, the first story must be about your parents and their lives.

You must do one project for each era: 1945–1953; 1954–1963; 1964–1978; 1979–1992. Due dates are noted on syllabus. There are a number of approaches you cantake, for instance, you could pick a major event or two and talk about them, oryou can do a more general overview. You can focus on particular years, but mustcover that year (or years) in depth.

You will be expected to share experiences with others in the class; in fact, there willbe ‘‘debate days’’ where, as your character, you share your opinion on a given issue.

You may be creative, but you must remain ‘‘in voice’’ and historically accurate,and without historical foresight—you must ‘‘be’’ the character and ‘‘live’’ in themoment.

Your projects will be graded on the following things:

1. Accuracy—have you accurately explained events? Have you accurately repre-sented how those events would impact your character or be viewed by yourcharacter? Was there any major event that you failed to include that would seemto have been important to your character? (For instance, if your character wantsto be an astronaut and you fail to mention the moon landing or Sputnik, that’s apretty glaring omission.)

2. Depth—how nuanced is your story; how much does it show a deep understandingof the events, cultural realities, and social position of your character? How welldo you demonstrate the societal norms and pressures that this character wouldbe expected to live up to? What are the risks if s=he does not ‘‘conform?’’ Whatare the true desires of the character?

3. Integration—how well do you integrate the events into a story about your char-acter’s life?

4. Resources—how well does your story reflect the use of a variety of resources?5. Creativity—how well do you tell the story? How creative are you in imagining

how your character’s life is going? You have leeway in how you compile your pro-ject and in what you show . . . it doesn’t have to just be a paper. If you want toinclude a poster or a scrapbook or a ‘‘photo album,’’ or an example of a paper‘‘you’’ ‘‘wrote’’ for school, or a diary entry, or a phone conversation, or any otherway you want to communicate your message, that’s fine. And you can do it indifferent ways for each era, if you desire. You are really encouraged to do some-thing interesting and different, as long as it still has the required substance.

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Character Descriptions

World War II veteran. 44 in 1945. A general in the army, career military. Only oldenough to enlist at the end of WWI, never got over the disappointment of not beingsent ‘‘over there,’’ so decided to stay in the military and get your next chance. Youare moving up in rank and some have suggested that someday you may be head ofthe army. Married with three children, ages 24, 20, and 16.

41 in 1945, male. Elected to the Senate in 1936, a Roosevelt Democrat and, atage 32, the youngest member of the Senate. Represent the people of Virginia andserve on the armed services committee and the appropriations committee. Supportsocial welfare programs. A lifelong public servant with aspirations of running forpresident someday.

Male, 40 in 1945, you were a junior physicist on the Manhattan Project. You arehopeful that the advances in nuclear technology will bring peace and prosperity toAmerica. You are married with an 18-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son.

You are 35 in 1945. Male. You have made your way to Hollywood, where youhave won acclaim for being a ‘‘rising star’’ who is unafraid to tell the truth the wayyou see it. You are excited by the open climate in Hollywood, where social norms arequite different than they were in your hometown in Missouri. Even so you are wor-ried about being too open about certain aspects of your life because you worry aboutdiscrimination and losing your nation-wide audience. You were working on a movieabout the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler when the atomic bomb was dropped. Youwonder about the future of the world and of the United States.

Male. In 1945, a 35-year-old representative from New Mexico, site of the nucleartests and Los Alamos laboratory. Proponent of nuclear war and the necessity ofnuclear weapons. A Republican who has aspirations of becoming president someday.

Female, 30 in 1945. A Jewish immigrant from Germany, where much of yourfamily perished in the concentration camps. You have many Jewish friends whoimmigrated to Palestine. You live in New York City and have three children.

Female, 27 in 1945, a white high school social studies teacher in an urban schoolin Little Rock, Arkansas. Married, 2 children, ages 5 and 7. Husband is a local poli-tician. Active in the Southern Baptist church.

World War II veteran. 21 upon return in 1945. Army air corps, spent time inarmy running bombing raids over Germany. Got married when you enlisted in1941; your son was born while you were away (he’s three years old now). Your wifeand son live with her parents in the Northeast. She worked for the Women’s ArmyCorp while you were in the war and wrote you letters faithfully.

World War II veteran. 19 in 1945. Spent a year in the Pacific theater with the555th Parachute Infantry Co. ‘‘The Triple Nickel,’’ a segregated black division.Decided to remain in military upon return home.

16 in 1945, female, live in New Jersey. Dreaming of getting married to yoursweetheart as soon as he gets back from Germany. You love to dance and readromance novels. You volunteer time at your church, where you also sing in the choir.You hope to start a family as soon as possible! You have heard about the wonderfulnew suburb of ‘‘Levittown’’ and hope that you can buy a house in such a familyfriendly place.

10 in 1945. Female. Daddy died a hero in France when you were 7. Mom worksas a receptionist for a local doctor. You do well in science classes and are fascinatedby science fiction stories. You got a chemistry kit for your 10th birthday and dream

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of being a scientist or maybe a pilot. You were awed by the atomic explosion inJapan.

10 in 1945. Born in 1935 in Washington, D.C., male. Too young to fight inWorld War II, but raised to be very passionate about defending America. Poor eye-sight keeps you from joining the military service. Have a good ear for languages.Father worked for the government. Oldest of four children.

5 in 1945. Male. Born in 1940. Appointed Under-Secretary of State to Europeduring the Nixon administration in return for your hard work on the Nixon cam-paign for president.

Birthday is VJ Day. White, male. Father is prep-school and Ivy-League edu-cated, mother was a debutante. Live in Boston with a summer home on the Cape.Two older brothers. Interested in science and physics.

Birthday is VJ Day. Black, male. Father is a reverend. Home a 3-room housewithout running water in small-town Mississippi, about an hour from the nearestbig city. Youngest of 6 children (the oldest is 10), and the only boy.

Female, born in 1949 to a Catholic family in Baltimore. Go to Catholic school.Strict parents talk incessantly about the erosion of morality in today’s youth. Yourolder brother plans to be a priest. You love music and dancing.

Born in 1953. Female. Father is a professor of English at U.C. Berkley. You lovepoetry and music, and have a rebellious streak. Hate injustice and being forced to dothings. Strong sense of commitment, honor, and right and wrong.

Male. Born in 1960. Daddy was in the army but had to retire when his legs gotblown off in Vietnam in 1972. You want to go into the military and can’t understandwhy he doesn’t support you—you want to see the world and fight for your countrylike he did. You plan to join the Marines.

Male. Born in 1961; spend 1968–1973 in Canada with your parents. You becamegreat at ice hockey while you were there and hope to compete in the Olympics some-day. You are fascinated by politics and go to the Soviet Union on a school trip in1977.

Female, born 1963. Live on a commune in California with your unmarried parents.Your father is an artist, your mother, a writer. They are active in the antiwar move-ment and think the government is destroying the hope of tomorrow by wasting ageneration in a pointless war. You are an only child but feel like part of a big extendedfamily, with the other children of the commune as your ‘‘brothers’’ and ‘‘sisters.’’

Notes

1. The questions are fairly traditional, asking about instructor preparation, presentationof course objectives and instructional material, use of relevant tests and assignments, allowingfreedom to express ideas or opinions, increasing critical thinking skills, encouraging learningthrough instructor interest, challenging students by presenting new viewpoints, and avail-ability for additional assistance.

2. The course ended in May 2004. The survey response rate was 94%.3. Another option would be to administer a pre- and post- test, which I did not think of

doing until it was too late. One potential problem with such a test is that it is likely to focus onconcrete knowledge, rather than some of the broader, less-easily measured learning objectives.For a broader examination of the problems inherent in assessing pedagogical techniques, seeE.D. Hirsch, Jr., 2002.

4. For a cautionary discussion on relying only on ‘perceptions of cognitive learning’ toassess the learning experience, see J. W. Gentry, S. F. Commuri, A. C. Burns, and J. R. Dick-enson, 1998.

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References

Bonwell, Charles and James Eison. 1991. Active Learning: Creating Excitement in theClassroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. Washington, D.C.: GeorgeWashington University School of Education and Human Development.

Cooke, Ernest F. 1986. ‘‘The Dilemma in Evaluating Classroom Innovations.’’ Proceedings ofthe Annual Conference of the Association for Business Simulations and Experiential Learn-ing 13: 110–114.

Dougherty, Beth K. 2003. ‘‘Byzantine Politics: Using Simulations to Make Sense of theMiddle East.’’ PS: Political Science and Politics 36(April): 240–241.

Gosen, Jerry and John Washbush. 2004. ‘‘A Review of Scholarship on Assessing ExperientialLearning Effectiveness.’’ Simulation and Gaming 35: 270–293.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 2002. ‘‘Classroom Research and Cargo Cults.’’ Policy Review (October).www.policyreview.org=oct02=hisrch print.html (August 2, 2005).

Jefferson, Kurt W. 1999. ‘‘The Bosnian War Crimes Trial Simulation: Teaching Studentsabout the Fuzziness of World Politics and International Law.’’ PS: Political Science &Politics 32(September): 589–592.

Josefson, Jim and Kelly Casey. 2000. ‘‘Simulating Issue Networks in Small Classes Using theWorld Wide Web.’’ PS: Political Science & Politics 33(December): 843–846.

Larson, Stephanie Greco. 2004. ‘‘ ‘We the People’: Diversifying Role Playing in Undergrad-uate American Politics Courses.’’ PS: Political Science & Politics 37: 303–306.

Newmann, William W. and Judyth L. Twigg. 2000. ‘‘Active Engagement of the Intro IRStudent: A Simulation Approach.’’ PS Online 33: 835–842. http:==www.apsanet.org=imgtest=ActiveEngagementIRStudent.pdf. (July 30, 2005).

Smith, Elizabeth T. and Mark A. Boyer. 1996. ‘‘Designing In-Class Simulations.’’ PS:Political Science and Politics 29(December): 690–694.

van Ments, Morry. 1989. The Effective Use of Role-Play: A Handbook for Teachers andTrainers. New York: London=Nichols Publishing.

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