Element Design for Active Learning: A Design Thinking Approach to Assignment Development for Political Science, Media, and Communication Education

Hundreds of active learning assignments are reported in the political education literature. However, the adaptability of these assignments to new courses can be limited by different learning outcomes, course themes, or institutional contexts. To assist educators in developing assignments that align with their teaching needs, this study introduces the concept of element design. Element design refers to isolating and combining elements of active learning techniques to create a single assignment. After first conceptualizing active learning as a process, the study argues that element design can stimulate pedagogical innovation, increase the adaptability of existing assignments, and aid empirical assessments of learning. Then, the study details how elements from eight active learning techniques were combined to create the counterfactual case study, an assignment targeting causal thinking, process tracing, and the analysis of complex relationships. Student evaluations from two cohorts of postgraduate students (N = 72) help evaluate the assignment in a Master’s-level political communication course. Using feedback from the first cohort, a dedicated debriefing seminar was added that improved students’ self-reported learning and achievement of the learning outcomes. Overall, the article works as a proof of concept that a modular approach to assignment development can generate novel and effective assignments that stimulate active learning.