Teaching Effective Policy Memo Writing and Infographics in a Policy Program

28 January 2020, Version 1
This content is an early or alternative research output and has not been peer-reviewed at the time of posting.

Abstract

Both scholarship on education and practice have recently encouraged the inclusion of writing assignments in the classroom, even in introductory courses. Writing-across-the-curriculum programs have been implemented across universities and colleges, promoting structured, writing assignments outside of language-based programs and courses. The collective knowledge on the subject highlights the effectiveness of frequent short assignments as being better for achieving learning goals, in comparison to more traditional, longer term papers often assigned in upper-division and graduate political science courses. This paper explains our efforts to revise the curriculum in two of the courses in our Master’s in International Policy Management program. In particular, we focus on two types of policy writing, policy memos and infographics. In this paper, we discuss the background of the program and courses, our choices of assignments, and their design and implementation. Further, we present student assessment of how these assignments contributed to their learning in the courses.

Keywords

TLC2020
Teaching Research and Writing
Infographics
Policy Memos
graduate education

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