For the spring semester of 1986 I designed a seminar on the problems of contemporary Soviet society that would give students a different perspective on the dynamics of decision- making in the USSR. The class, which met once a week for fifteen weeks, culminated in a series of Politburo meetings during which students acted as key Politburo members and considered proposals for reform submitted to them by specialists from various branches of the soviet government.

The idea for such an exercise came to me after reading Douglas W. Simon's recent article in News for Teachers of Political Science about a National Security Council simulation he conducted at Drew University. I felt the most crucial difficulty with a Politburo simulation as opposed to the NSC simulation would be the paucity of reliable and detailed information on sessions of the Politburo.

How do you teach a student of public administration how to make a management study or examine a budget in a classroom setting? How do you give a rural Idaho student a sense of the tensions, conflicts, and problems of a major metropolitan area without having lived in that area? How do you dramatize the logical consequences of administrative theorists in a humorous manner that reinforces learning? Role-playing and role-playing drama have been used by the author over the past decade to accomplish each of these objectives.

Student run survey projects are recommended in the instructor's manuals of many introductory American National Government texts. However, the suggested exercises are for non-random student surveys and/or contain few, if any instructions. James Bindley's instructor's manual for Burnham's Democracy In the Making, 2nd Ed. is typical when he writes:

In the Summer, 1980 edition of News John Seltz described in “Public Opinion: Polling and Data Analysis,” his experiences using personal surveys developed and carried out by his Presidency and Congress courses. He contended that such exercises provided many benefits to students, especially in upper level undergraduate courses.

As a lively discipline, political science meshes well with the print media. Coverage of recent events by newspapers and magazines can be an outgoing part of the classroom experience. Encouraging students to get personal subscriptions points them toward greater involvement in the learning process.

My initial use of media revolved around single issues of journals in combination with texts. For Introduction to International Relations, I ordered the latest Foreign Affairs and for International Law, I included the most recent American Journal of International Law. One of my best finds, a special issue of International Organization devoted to Canada, rounded out coverage for a special topics seminar on Canada. Student personal copies of journals, sometimes tied to student memberships, proved rewarding in helping juniors and seniors to learn.

In the past 25 years, an old social science task — management training and education for the public and private sectors — has spawned a variety of innovative approaches and created a new educational speciality. This new field, usually labeled Human Resources Development (HRD) or Organizational Development (OD), challenges conventional political science and public administration education in a number of important respects. HRD in the 1980s reflects the convergence of two contemporary approaches to learning and management. The first stems from humanistic psychology and its various applications in education; the second from the “behavioral science revolution” in management and organizational theory.

In the Summer 1985 issue of the News for Teachers of Political Science, Peter Steinberger raises the perenially fascinating question of the appropriate purposes of the undergraduate political science curriculum. Professor Steinberger rejects two possible purposes, coverage, and the production of good citizens. He also questions the value of teaching subjects that might be learned outside the classroom. Instead, he argues the purpose of an undergraduate curriculum should be teaching one or more modes of thinking characteristic of political science, what might be called our strategies of inquiry. While I agree with Professor Steinberger that we should teach our students how we think, I believe the political science curriculum should have more purposes than this.

Three years ago I proposed at SUNY Cortland (a liberal arts college emphasizing undergraduate education with a student population of about 5500) the creation of onecredit introductory level module topics courses in our Political Science Department. The purposes of these modules were several: 1) to provide faculty with a testing ground for new courses located at the upper level. One-credit topics modules would allow faculty to experiment with a new course or new subject on a smaller scale, avoiding the necessity of an intellectual and time investment in a full semester offering; 2)to provide some alternate introductory-level course offerings for non-political-science majors in addition to our two core offerings, Introduction to American Government, and Introduction to Comparative World Systems.

Many Political Science courses include sections on campaign finance activity. Courses on Congress and on the Presidency may include sections on the financing of elections for these offices, and courses on campaigns and elections will probably cover campaign finance. In addition, courses on interest groups and on parties may include sections that focus on the activities of these actors in financing campaigns for public office.

The Federal Election Commission can provide an assortment of materials that may be useful in teaching about campaign finance. Some of these materials are most useful as sources of data for lecture preparation, while other offerings can be used as part of student projects or papers. In the sections below, these materials will be described, and some classroom uses will be suggested.

This brief essay/tutorial explains how the new POLINET online network for political scientists and public administrators can be used to access the AP news for teaching American government. POLINET is an internationally accessible telecommunications network featuring electronic mail, teleconferencing, online newsletters, distribution of software, access to databases, and other services. One of these services is access to current AP news.