In a matter of weeks, the COVID-19 outbreak has reshaped traditional teaching methods and online teaching and learning tools have become crucial. In these challenging days, IPSAMOOCs are an essential tool for many IPSA members: students who are considering or starting a degree in Political Science; professors and lecturers at any level, who can innovatively complement their existing courses; anyone interested in a better understanding of the challenges facing contemporary democracies.
Authored by some of the most outstanding academics in the IPSA community, IPSAMOOC is a joint project from IPSA and Federica WebLearning. The Center devoted to innovation, experimentation and dissemination of multimedia distance learning at the University of Naples Federico II.
Any IPSA member can use IPSAMOOCs, single or selected modules from diverse IPSA MOOCs, as the interactive coursebook for their course, or as a companion to their regular course content, as part of a fully online, flipped classroom delivery mode. Students can study the content asynchronously and then, synchronous time in the virtual classroom can be used to explore the topic and related issues with the students in more depth.
Course List
Comparative Political Systems: This course analyzes the different forms of government, their structure and role, the assets and liabilities of the different institutional structures and approaches and the effectiveness of different democratic regimes.
Contemporary Issues in World Politics: This course reviews the driving forces of International Politics. It first describes the post-World War II international order before moving on to look at its breakdown and resultant transformation.
Democracy and Autocracy: This course aims to analyze why and how democratic regimes emerge from autocratic regimes, as well as why and how democratic regression or democratic breakdown takes place.
Understanding Political Concepts: This MOOC teaches conceptual thinking and elementary theory-building through Hyperpolitics, an interactive dictionary for understanding and working with the most central concepts in Political Science.
Comparative Research Designs and Methods: This course provides an introduction and overview of systematic comparative analysis in the Social Sciences and shows you how to use this method for constructive explanation and theory building.
Global Politics: The course explores global order and local disorders to explain why International Studies in the West are moving towards a planetary approach to World Politics.
Individually these form indispensable chunks of insight into the changing nature of democracy and other contemporary political issues. Together the first five courses form a core curriculum that provides useful food for thought and discussion in these turbulent times.
IPSAMOOC XSeries and courses are available on the
edX platform.
