This piece is part of CRLT and the Edward Ginsberg Center's partnership to offer programming and resources for instructors around democratic and civic engagement through the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series. 

Instructors preparing to teach during the post-election period face a complex task that requires thoughtful preparation. To start, it is hard to anticipate how long the post-election period will last or how central it will be to public discourse. We may find ourselves with clear winners of major races on election night, in a short period of uncertainty as votes are processed and counted, or in a drawn-out post-election scenario, as results in key races are contested or litigated. 

Adding to the complexity, the events following election day will impact our students differently. Regardless of the outcome of major elections, some of our students will be disappointed. Moreover, the extent to which students are directly impacted by election outcomes—or by the heightened rhetoric of a prolonged post-election period—will vary depending on their identities, positionality, and individual circumstances. 

No matter where we find ourselves on November 6th, it’s safe to assume that our students will be learning in tumultuous times, and some will be experiencing heightened stress and strong emotions. In addition, for many of our students, this election will have been one of their first voting experiences. This post-election period may be important to their long-term democratic and civic engagement, and we can support them as they interpret post-election events and information, consider their implications, and reflect on the future of their civic engagement.  

As you support your students in this moment and navigate this teaching moment, consultants at CRLT and Ginsberg Center are available to talk with you about planning courses or class sessions. You can request a consultation with CRLT or use Ginsberg Center’s Support Request Form.

CRLT and the Edward Ginsberg Center are partnering to offer programming and resources for instructors teaching during the 2024 election through the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series. As part of this collaboration, we are refreshing our guidance from recent presidential elections. While many of the strategies in our earlier entries remain as best practices, this updated piece also reflects our ongoing efforts on the topic, adapted for the current political environment.

Guest Author: Paul Barron, LSA Opportunity Hub

We’re heading towards that point in the semester where students’ engagement may wane as they juggle competing deadlines and responsibilities. While it can help to revisit the syllabus and remind students of upcoming deadlines, another way to promote engagement is to address a topic they’re stressing about: looking for jobs and internships. This blog post offers a range of ways that instructors can help students identify links between their courses and their future careers. For more ideas, and to spend time considering approaches to engaging students in your course by connecting it to their career exploration, register for this CRLT workshop: Engaging Students by Integrating Career Development Into Your CourseFriday, October 27, from 12:00 pm - 02:00 pm (lunch provided).

In scientific research, rigor refers to the level of care and precision used in the design, execution, and interpretation of experiments and studies. For example, the National Institute of Health (NIH), a major funding source for medical and biological sciences, requires grant applications and progress reports to adhere to a strict standard of rigor. In this setting, scientific rigor is defined as: “the strict application of the scientific method to ensure unbiased and well-controlled experimental design, methodology, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results.” While this definition is STEM specific, descriptions of rigor in other disciplines also focus on thoughtfully executing one’s work, ensuring it is grounded in scholarship, and examining one’s biases in analysis and interpretation (e.g., see Gill & Gill, 2020; Langtree, Birks, & Biedermann, 2019; and Riggs & Büchler, 2007).

How might we conceptualize rigor in a college teaching setting? At a minimum, it would involve thoughtfully chosen, clearly laid out learning goals, targeted assessments of those goals, and learning activities designed for students to reach those goals, independent of student demographic or background. The design and implementation of a rigorous course would be grounded in the scholarship of teaching and learning for the discipline. Additionally, an indicator of rigor would measure how many students (and by how much) have pushed the boundaries of their knowledge, skills, and attitudes in order to meet the course objectives.

This midterm election season brings an important opportunity for students and instructors to connect classroom learning to the value of civic engagement. Developments in law and politics at the national level have highlighted the particular importance of state and local civic engagement.

The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching works with instructors to think through approaches to incorporating discussion of the midterm election and its links to civic engagement into their courses, as well as strategies for responding in the moment when these issues arise.

Encouraging students to engage in the US democratic process is a non-partisan activity

This post shares highlights from resources curated for faculty and staff to not only encourage voter engagement, but also to support the development of students’ habits of democracy before and after the upcoming election. Regardless of citizenship status, domestic and international students benefit from understanding how democracy works.