The Statecraft Effect: Assessment, Attitudes, and Academic Honesty

Linantud, John; Kaftan, Joanna

doi:10.1080/15512169.2018.1476253

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…For example, one key question concerns evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of available simulation models, such as Statecraft. Statecraft is a commercial, ready-made and fully online simulation of international politics, making strides into IR classrooms around the world (Carvalho 2014;Epley 2016;Linantud and Kaftan 2018;Raymond 2014;Saiya 2016). In module evaluations, students repeatedly say that Statecraft is fun and engaging (Raymond 2014), but it is notoriously difficult to confirm its learning-enhancing quality (Epley 2016: 214-215).…”

Section: Assessment In Ir: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing international relations in undergraduate education

Zwolski

2020

Eur Polit Sci

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This paper advocates a holistic approach to assessing international relations in undergraduate education, which revolves around: (a) essays and (b) active learningrelated tasks, such as simulation reflective statements/reports and performance. The paper argues that, on the one hand, academic essays are far from irrelevant and it is difficult to overestimate their practical significance. On the other hand, active learning-related tasks are best utilised as a supplementary assessment, expanding the students' range of transferable skills. The assessment structure advocated in this paper results from a holistic approach to assessment design, which includes teacher's own experience, familiarity with pedagogical scholarship and input from students. This last element is the least common even though it makes sense to understand how students see their own assessment. To that end, the paper shares the results of a pilot project run at one of the UK universities, which engaged students as partners in rethinking their assessment. Keywords Assessment · Essays · International relations · SimulationsThis paper aims to serve as one of the reference points for international relations (IR) teachers who are interested in enhancing their teaching practices-or at least making their pedagogical choices more conscious. By no means is it the first contribution of this kind, but it does take stock of the existing teaching and learning literature in IR. The paper also offers original contribution on how to design IR assessment in undergraduate education, which is a slightly underdeveloped topic but one of foremost importance to students. To that end, the paper suggests a holistic framework for assessment design, and in that context, it shares the experience of running a pilot initiative involving politics and IR students at a UK university in shaping how they are assessed. The paper begins by reappraising the scholarship on assessment in IR, although the boundaries are blurred here and most literature deals with teaching * Kamil Zwolski

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