POL 333: Western European Politics
Dr. Oliver focused on exercising student's critical thinking skills in the context of a research project. She developed a rubric for the research paper which built upon elements from the "WSU Critical Thinking Rubric" and the "Research Project Rubric." The rubric places substantial emphasis on four learning outcomes dimensions: 1) devising a research question which includes an independent and dependent variable; 2) identifying, weighting and categorizing supportive and non-supportive data relative to the hypothesis; 3) explicitly conveying connections between the evidence presented and the research question under examination; 4) contextualizing the research findings within wider debates in the literature.

Dr. Oliver compared student work in previous classes, where she provided a much more limited and generic rubric, with students' work in the Spring, 2008 POL 333 class, where she used the revised rubric (see below). Most students did a much better job at selecting the information they presented. The students had less of a tendency to follow the argument stream of a single author (which often involved including non-relevant information) and appeared better equipped to decisively create their own analytical framework from which they could appraise different and sometimes contrasting pieces of evidence.

In addition , several of the students who received a below average grade on the midterm and the final exam received a significantly higher grade on the paper. In past years, this was a very rare occurrence. However, it appeared that presenting the detailed rubric weeks before the paper was due allowed several students to conduct more focused research and to work more efficiently on their papers.

Next year, Dr. Oliver intends to add in-class exercises which might be categorized as "scaffolding" assignments. Early in the semester, she will pick three journal articles from the assigned readings and ask that students to bring to class a one page document in which they identify the following elements: 1) research question; 2) dependent and independent variables; 3) hypothesis/argument; and 4) evidence. She will then provide time for students to compare their answers in a group and for groups to share and compare responses. It is her hope that this exercise will familiarize students with key concepts of research design so that they can more readily launch into their own projects in the second half of the semester.

Rubric