Course Overview

The Political Science Department designed the American Government course to encourage reflection about politics in a general, to introduce theoretical methods employed in the social sciences and to acquaint students with some of the major issues on the American political scene today. The course seeks to provide students with an improved understanding of contemporary American government, the political beliefs of Americans and the political behavior of citizens and public officials. Students will also become aware of the different approaches that political scientists use to study political systems.

Class lectures addressing the early constitutional period will make explicit the importance of political ideas and philosophies in the shaping of our primary political institutions. The discussions on Congress and the Presidency will show how political scientists use the institutional approach to examine the formal structures of these branches of government and the behavioral approach to study the actions of individual members of Congress and various Presidents. The course will examine the behavioral methodology utilized to collect and analyze data on public opinion and political behavior and note the importance of language and symbols in the process of governance. Discussions of foreign and domestic policy-making will introduce the policy making approach to develop a better understanding of the public policy-making process and means to evaluate policy outcomes. Lectures of the Supreme Court and constitutional law will demonstrate how the legalistic approach affects our interpretation of the meaning of the Constitution and its application by the courts to the problems of today.

In addition, Professor Swansbrough has designed the course to achieve four other objectives:

1. Enhance students' active learning, critical thinking skills and knowledge of domestic and foreign policy issues. The course will include activities, case studies, class discussions and policy debates to enhance critical thinking skills. Team projects will focus on either a domestic issue (public school vouchers or federal funding of stem cell research) or a foreign policy issue (military base closings to provide additional funds for the administration's proposed National Missile Defense program.

2.Strengthen students' written and oral communication skills. Class members will prepare analyses of the team issues and participate in a simulated congressional debate. Students will play the role of an actual Member of Congress and draft a Member Profile that describes the congressional district and the Member's voting record and party loyalty. Students' oral skills will develop through class discussions, face-to-face meetings within their party teams, on-line Discussion Board exchanges of information and their team's congressional debate on the assigned issue.

3. Acquaint students with the modern technological tools they will encounter in today's governmental offices and private workplaces. Student learners will access on-line current policy statements by the President, newspaper coverage of the issue topics and the official Web sites of their assigned member of Congress. They will share information through the use of their team's on-line Discussion Board. The course will introduce students to the contemporary political usage of the Internet.

4. Underscore the importance of collaborative learning and teamwork in the 21st century. Students will communicate via e-mail or listserves with their teams. Learners will post their research findings on issue topics and their response to other students' ideas on the web-based asynchronous threaded Discussion Board. Each team will develop its own rules and organization for participation in the collaborative assignments. Leadership and recording responsibilities on each team will be rotated among team members. Team members will evaluate the quality of each student learner's on-line and face-to-face participation throughout the class for a significant portion of the course grade.

NOTE: A sizeable percentage of the course grade will be based upon peer assessments of your in-class and on-line participation in the Discussion Board and team congressional policy debates before the full class. This course thus requires you to become an active learner, not a simple scribe, which will help you to succeed in the 21st century.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust