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Another FaCTS Mellon Project

Activating Black Poitics Using Inverted Classroom Techniques

by Dr. Megan Osterbur

Black Politics as a course serves Political Science students as well as the broader Xavier student body as not only a Political Science elective but also as part of the African American and Diaspora Studies curriculum. To date the course has been constructed around a traditional discussion-lecture model and focused on contemporary United States Black political leadership and behavior. This project seeks to reimagine the course to utilize flipped classroom methods to increase interaction in the classroom and higher order thinking in terms of Blooms's taxonomy. Additionally this will provide an opportunity to review and revise the course content to move beyond the current U.S. focus and incorporate Black political behavior and leadership across the diaspora. The objectives of these revisions are to improve the alignment of the course with the change from African American Studies to African American and Diaspora Studies program as well as respond to feedback from the head of Political Science regarding the current US-centric coure structure, to incorporate established techniques for engaged learning through inverted classroom pedagogy, and move the learning objectives from largely introduction and understanding of materials to mastery and synthesis of principle concepts in the field.

In addition to the goals with regard to student outcomes, this project will ultimately result in a conference presentation and scholarly article for publication.

Start date: Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Finish date: Monday, May 15, 2017