Weekly Clemson Votes Tip for Faculty – Dialogue, Week of September 14

September 13, 2020

*The nonpartisan ClemsonVotes coalition will be providing ideas and resources to faculty and instructors throughout the fall 2020 semester via the Clemson Teaching Listserv

This week’s resource ties into the idea of productive dialogue. If we don’t help students practice engaging in dialogue on interesting societal issues that impact us and our disciplines, when else will they learn?

The nonpartisan and nonprofit organization Project Pericles has a range of resources available to help faculty with this task! By this point in the semester, students are at a good point in the learning curve of knowing themselves as learners, their instructors as guides, and their peers as collaborators. As many courses are starting to pivot to face-to-face and blended in the next week, it is a great time for faculty and instructors of record to incorporate aspects of deliberative dialogue to continue to advance student learning. Could you consider adding these activities to your course? 

Project Pericles has a range of useful an easy-to-implement resources on civic and public issues, including:

• The Deliberative Dialogues resources for helping students explore stances on public issues.
• The Voting Modules, created explicitly to help students connect the act of voting into their disciplinary work.
• A collection of Course Syllabi for courses focused on real world problems across multiple disciplines. Faculty may find useful entire course designs or components therein.

If you use these resources or have other voter or democratic engagement connections in your course, please let us know!