Scaffolding Assignments and Activities for Undergraduate Research Methods

This article details assignments and lessons created for and tested in research methods courses at two different universities, a large state school and a small liberal arts college. Each assignment or activity utilized scaffolding. Students were asked to push beyond their comfort zone while utilizing concrete and/or creative examples, descriptions, and instructor feedback. We detail an assignment where students assess a single social science article and an assignment that asks students to find examples of bad statistics. Along with the assignments, we outline some of the activities we used during class discussion. These activities include using movies and box office sales to talk about most similar and most different systems design and using an episode of the TV show 30 Rock to talk about coding and operationalization of variables. Creating a bank of engaging, ready-to-use activities and lessons for research methods is valuable for political science instructors, especially those accustomed to teaching more traditional political science courses.