Several months back, I received a Newcastle University Teaching and Learning Committee Innovation Award for my proposal to run a problem-based learning advanced undergraduate seminar on visualities and international politics. The hope is that leading this seminar will feed back into my own research interests just in time for me to take a study leave in Semester II. Here is a small blurb for the seminar:
POL 3093: Advanced Research Seminar in Politics I
In this module, the topic of visuality (or visualities) and international politics is the catalyst for problem-based learning (PBL) in a small seminar environment. The problem to be explored will be ‘how to analyse the visual dimensions of international politics?' The seminar will then intensively explore the conceptual and methodological elements of the problem scenario, identify and develop case-studies/data sets, and analyse them as appropriate. Students will work in small groups to complete weekly tasks that will then culminate in the production of a group research project.
PBL encourages students to apply knowledge and skills concretely through thinking and doing. With its ability to combine theoretical understanding and applied knowledge, PBL has been used in other subject areas as a means of promoting the development of conceptual and practical skills that are well suited to post-graduate studies and/or future employment.
Here are links to edited versions of the proposal and syllabus.
It has been a real challenge to develop a seminar that conforms to the aims of PBL while providing enough structure and back-ground knowledge to give students a chance to pursue interesting research. In the end, I think I've reached a via media that will not satisfy PBL purists who would argue for the need for a more open-ended structure or those who prefer more orthodox seminar formats. This is certainly not the kind of PBL seminar one would see in engineering for example, but I hope by being flexible about what we undertake once some of the backgroud material has been covered, it will allow the seminar to grow around the activities and interests of the students.
There has also been the issue of how broad and accessible the material should be. Some of what is being proposed in the syllabus will probably prove to be over-ambitious, but it is my hope that by engaging with a range of material, participants will at least begin to get a sense of what we do not (yet) know.
One may ask 'where are the visual artifacts?' I've made the decision that I will be shifting responsibility onto the participants to bring in artifacts to discuss in seminar. In part, this is because I am curious to see what they look at on a regular basis, what they determine to be 'political' images, and how they make these determinations.
Over the coming months, I will be providing periodic updates of how the seminar is progressing and anything that I learn along the way. If anyone out there is pursuing something similar or would like to adapt any of the ideas presented in my proposal or syllabus, I would really like to hear fom you. In part, this is about being able to learn from colleagues. Also, in the current higher education environment where intrinsic value has died a horrible death, having an idea of how colleagues approach PBL and/or visual politics may be useful for the purposes of being able to show 'impact'...
