James Danziger, University of California, Irvine

How to engage students with diverse knowledge, motivations and interests has become a recurring topic for instructors. This multiple-award- winning teacher shares some of the strategies he uses to encourage students to be more actively involved in political science courses. These include innovative activities such as his “acid tests” that help students to identify their value preferences about a “good society” and the appropriate role of government and to become more aware of value differences with their peers. Another technique is the creative scenarios and role-playing he employs to draw the students into decisions about how to respond to challenging political situations. He will also detail a project in which students “do” political science through a fully-realized hypothesis-testing analysis using cross-national data from 30 countries. And he will discuss his approaches to the use of music in the course and the writing of interesting essay prompts for exams.