Bruce M. Wilson

Legal Opportunity Structures and Social Movements The Effects of Institutional Change on Costa Rican Politics

How does institutional change in established democracies affect the distribution of political power in society? The new constitutional court in Costa Rica allows the authors to analyze the effects of judicial reform on the capacity of politically marginalized groups to safeguard their constitutional rights. Particular attention is paid to homosexuals, AIDS patients, and labor unions. The authors argue that it was not the establishment of the court as such but rather the specific rules regulating access to and cost of approaching the court that enabled marginalized groups to push for their rights and effectively circumvent the traditional policy-making process. Although these groups did not win all their cases, they have nonetheless been able to achieve considerable success in the protection of their previously denied constitutional rights. The legal reform partially redistributed power in society from policy makers to social groups and individuals.

Does Active Learning Enhance Learner Outcomes? Evidence from Discussion Participation in Online Classes

Discussion is one form of active learning, which has been linked to better learner outcomes. Little is known about the relationship between active learning through discussion and learner outcome in the online environment. Here, we construct an index of active learning online that includes the number of postings a student has read, the number of direct responses a student has posted, and how many meaningful “in-depth” statements a student has made. We link this index to course grade as a proxy for learner outcome and find that active learners perform better, on average, than the less active students. We also analyze the component indicators of the index and find that the number of postings read is most closely related to course grade. This is particularly true for those students who came into the class with a lower GPA. We conclude that online courses can stimulate active learning through discussion. Furthermore, we point to the importance of measurement of active learning in any assessment effort and argue that the individual components of active learning behavior through discussions might have a differential effect on learner outcomes.

Assessing Student Perceptions of the Benefits of Discussions in Small-Group, Large-Class, and Online Learning Contexts

A large literature establishes the benefits of discussions for stimulating student engagement and critical thinking skills. However, we know considerably less about the differential effects of various discussion environments on student learning. In this study, we assess student perceptions concerning the benefits of discussions in an upper-level political science class. We compare how students evaluated discussions in the whole-class environment, in small face-to-face discussion groups, and in online discussion groups. Overall, according to student surveys, small discussion groups elicited the highest student satisfaction and scored highest in critical thinking skills, while online discussions provided the best forum to express thoughts. While they did not favor all-class discussions, students reported that this format, too, provided benefits.

Learning from “Listening” to Peers in Online Political Science Classes

Studies of classroom behavior and learning outcomes have demonstrated that student discussion leads to better learner outcomes. Do these effects, which are based on studies of face-to-face interaction, transfer to the virtual classroom? Existing studies of online postings in asynchronous discussion forums have primarily studied the effects on the authors of the postings. The effect on the recipients—the students reading the postings—has been largely neglected. We set out to fill this gap in our understanding of online discussions by analyzing the effect of reading behavior on course performance. We first perform an in-depth analysis of student discussion behavior in two online courses. We consider the quantity and quality of student postings, as well as the number of postings read by each student. We then test our main findings using a larger dataset of 279 students from eight additional classes, controlling for student grade point average, major, class standing, race, gender, and instructor. Overall, our results suggest that reading is significantly and independently related to course performance. We conclude that discussions have an important place in online classes.

Leftist Parties, Neoliberal Policies, and Reelection Strategies The Case of the PLN in Costa Rica

How do leftist parties in government abandon their traditional economic development programs, adopt neoliberal policies, and still win reelection? This article examines the case of the leftist National Liberation Party (PLN) in Costa Rica to explain this unexpected outcome. The author argues that the explanation lies on two separate but related levels, those of institutional rules and policy implementation strategies. Institutional rules constrain the behavior of political actors in multiple ways and structure political interaction. However, governments also employ specific policy implementation strategies (e.g., obfuscation, compensation, division, and incrementalism) to adopt unpopular policies while reducing electoral costs. As a result, opposition to the reforms is more difficult to organize and potential negative consequences are difficult to identify for voters. The institutional rules and the strategies that governments employ can account for the seeming paradox of a leftist party repeatedly abandoning its electoral promises, adopting neoliberal policies, and still winning reelection.

Partial Online Instruction and Gender-based Differences in Learning: A Quasi-Experimental Study of American Government

College teachers are increasingly using instructional technology to supplement or substitute for face-to-face instruction. The incentives and arguments for doing so are many, including facilitation of higher education for non-traditional students and changing student demographics, skill building to improve student preparation for workplaces that are likely to use computer technology, space restrictions in universities with growing enrollment, the opportunities that Internet classrooms provide for organizing and monitoring student work and assignments, and so on. However, little is known about how online instruction affects the learner. Online instruction is, in many ways, fundamentally different from face-to-face instruction (see, for example, Lee 2003 ; McCormack and Jones 1998 ; Palloff and Pratt 1999 ). For instance, instructors are unlikely to simply post their lecture notes online in the hope that the students will read, take notes, memorize, and retain the information, which would be the closest equivalent to a traditional lecture classroom. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that different instructional modes (such as lectures or online instruction) necessarily have the same learner outcomes. This lack of knowledge concerning the effects of online instruction on learner outcomes also extends to the question of gender equality. Authors are listed in reverse alphabetical order. We gratefully acknowledge financial support for both the redesign and the evaluation of the course from the Pew Learning and Technology Program, Center for Academic Transformation, Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign.

Who SoTLs Where? Publishing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Political Science

ABSTRACT Political science, as a discipline, is a relative newcomer to the Scholarship ofTeaching and Learning (SoTL).We examine authorship patterns of SoTL articles in PS:PoliticalSciencePGlassick,Huber,andMaeroff1997).TheScholarshipofTeachingandLearningisnotconfinedtotheU.S.;infact,SoTLisgainingrelevanceinternationally.Forexample,intheUK,theResearchAssessmentExercise(anassessmentofuni-versities’researchactivitiesthatisacrucialcomponentforuni-versityrankingandfunding)statesthatforthe2008assessmentround,“highereducationpedagogicresearchwillbejudgedbythestandardsappliedtoallformsofresearchoutput”while“teach-ingmaterialsandsubject-relatedpedagogy...willbetreatedinthesamewayastextbooks”(RAE2008).Thus,insomecountriesSoTLworkisofficiallygainingequalstatustothatofothersub-stantivedisciplinaryresearch.AsignificantshareofSoTLstudiesispublishedinjournalsinthefieldofeducation.

From democratic socialism to neoliberalism: the metamorphoses of the people's national party in Jamaica

Why are leftist parties in government abandoning their state-led, redistributive economic development models in favor of market-determined neoliberal ones? Conventional explanations emphasize conditionality of international financial institutiosn. This argument, though, fails to account for differences in economic policy choices across countries or within a country over time. Analyzing the social democratic Peoples National Party of Jamaica during two periods when it accepted IMF-mandated neoliberal economic reform measures (1977–80 and 1989-present), an alternative approach is presented to illuminate why and how leftist governments switch economic policy programs. The two time periods show that IMF conditionality might be a necessary motivation for the adoption of neoliberal economic measures, but it is not sufficient motivation.I argue that the actual policies the PNP governments employed reflect changes in the relative influence of competing factions within the party. This approach, focusing on domestic actors rather than international ones to account for economic policy shifts, highlights the ways in which politicians can manipulate institutional rules to change the relative weight of different factions within the party to gain support for policy decisions that contradict the partys traditional social democratic ideology.

Spill-Over Effects in Online Discussions? Assessing the Effectiveness of Student Preceptors

Studies evince that student–student interaction in discussion settings is beneficial. These positive outcomes can also be effectively recreated in the online environment. We offer a preliminary look at the efficacy of a conditioning intervention: the role of student preceptors in promoting student interaction and elevating discussion quality. Using data from 23 discussion groups in a large (279 students) online course, we measure qualitative indicators of discussion activity under two quasi-experimental conditions: preceptor-as-student and preceptor-as-graduate teaching assistant (GTA). In the control condition, no student preceptor was present. We find that high-quality postings made by a student preceptor indeed trigger higher-quality postings by other students.

The Accountability Functions of Latin American Courts

This chapter examines the accountability function of superior courts in three Latin American countries—Argentina, Chile, and Colombia—in the last two decades.1 This comparison appears promising because the respective courts have assumed very dissimilar roles in countries that share a common colonial and independence history, similar legal traditions, and relatively parallel histories regarding the effects of the international economic environment. How, then, can we explain the different legal outcomes in these countries? More specifically, what explains the fact that some of the superior courts have exercised an active accountability function whereas others have been rather deferential to the executive?