Title: TEACHING NOTES: E-Classroom Overview
Course: US Election 2016-Leuphana Copy

[fa-info-circle] This is only visible to teachers. Take a look at this introduction when preparing this part of the project for your students.

This is your course's personal e-classroom. It is password-protected and everything uploaded or posted in this course is only visible to enrolled participants (with the exception of some blog posts, see below). The following teaching notes are meant as a brief and systematic overview of your course.

[fa-glyphicon-plus] E-classroom sections

Besides the introductory section, this course contains four main sections. Each section is divided into sub-sections. Activities and tasks are usually displayed as links in the respective section.

If a link is indented, this means that it is an additional resource or activity related to the superordinate task.

The first task in each section has a star (★), denoting that this is the core task of this section. In other words, if you only have limited time for the project and cannot cover the entire project curriculum, select the five tasks with a star to work on with your students.

These are the individual sections of your e-classroom

Title section

In the title section, you will find general resources and forums that could be useful for the entire duration of the project:

- The Course Forum is a regular discussion forum that can be edited by all participants. It can be used for any questions arising out of the project that are not related to a particular task, resource, or tool, or for discussions focusing on one of the tasks.
- The glossary Election Lingo serves as your course's central glossary for vocabulary definitions. Students can add entries to this glossary consisting of text, but also web-links, images, and videos. Students should also provide sources of the cited information and example sentences and they can comment on each other's entries, thereby adding or correcting information. Several activities throughout the project refer to this glossary, so that it can easily become a record of classroom work and a resource for exam preparation.
- The database Learner Texts serves as a repository for learner texts and files worth sharing that arise out of the different tasks in this course. In order to upload a file or insert a text, learner need to open the database, click on 'Add entry' and fill out the form. Uploaded learner texts can be browsed and accessed by all course participants. They can also add comments and provide peer feedback.
- The Project Journal is a notebook that can be used to document the project work in a systematic or rather informal way. All students can edit this journal and add contents. For example, you could nominate students to document the findings from the several tasks in this course, to collect the information on the candidates and their platforms, and all further information that helps them with their final prediction of the election outcome in their adopted state.
You can either use this module in Moodle or take advantage of the conveniences of Google Docs (at least one persona has to have a Google account for this). Here are short tutorials for both options:
  - SWAY: Using the Project Journal
  - SWAY: Setting up your Project Journal with Google Docs

Introduction

This introductory course section leads the students into the project by setting the goal and context of the subsequent curriculum. Participant courses adopt one U.S. state and become its virtual citizens – research its population's demography, culture, economy, and voting history. As a final task in the project, students will make an informed prediction for their state's voting behavior on Election Day and participate in the U.S. Election Project School Competition.

In this introduction, students explore their state for the first time and form hypotheses about its voting behavior.

This section includes:

- ★ TASK: Explore Your State
- TASK: Who Would You Vote For?

[fa-info-circle] To learn more about this section and its activities, read the TEACHING NOTES: Introduction section.

1    The Electoral System

The section "The Electoral System" serves as a general introduction to the elections through engaging students in learning about how Presidential Elections in the U.S. work.

Students research this content by watching explanatory videos and reading more detailed texts on the individual phases of the election. Scaffolding is provided through viewing guides. Students then summarize their findings on posters and present them orally to their classmates.

This section includes:

- ★ TASK: Electing the U.S. President
- TASK: The Electoral System – Step by Step

[fa-info-circle] To learn more about this section and its activities, read the TEACHING NOTES: Section 1.

2    The Candidates

The goal of this section is threefold: to learn about the personal and biographic background of the candidates, to analyze their political campaigns and how they present themselves, and to contrast this with how they are perceived in the American public.

Students research the candidates' background online and present their findings in a role playing activity. They analyze both candidates' political advertisements. Finally, they deconstruct political cartoons as one form of political commentary on the campaigns.

The activities in this section include:

- ★ TASK: Meet the Candidates

- TASK: Campaign Ads
- TASK: The Candidates' Secret Playbook

- TASK: What Are Political Cartoons?
- TASK: Writing a Political Cartoon Analysis
- TASK: Working with Political Cartoons Creatively

[fa-info-circle] To learn more about this section and its activities, read the TEACHING NOTES: Section 2.

3    The Campaign Issues

The section "The Campaign Issues" introduces students to the topics and issues that American voters are discussing in 2016. This includes getting an overview of the 2016 campaign issues, researching select issues in more detail, and finding out where the candidates stand on these issues.

Students research the issues by following major U.S. news media and create an issues mind map collaboratively in class. They analyze the candidates' websites and other sources and brief their classmates on central findings. Task support comes from the issues chart handout.

The main activity in this section is ★ TASK: The Campaign Issues and Where the Candidates Stand. Two extension activities are offered focusing on oral debate and written composition:

- TASK: Clinton’s and Trump’s Campaign Managers on the Ground
- TASK: Reaction to the Campaign Issues

[fa-info-circle] To learn more about this section and its activities, read the TEACHING NOTES: Section 3.

4    The Election in Our State

The target task of this project is to adopt one U.S. state and become its virtual citizens – research its population's demography, culture, economy, and voting history. Students are supposed to make an informed prediction for their state's voting behavior on Election Day and participate in the U.S. Election Project School Competition.

Task support for this activity is provided in the form of the state fact sheet. The section includes:

- ★ TASK: Predict the Election Outcome
- TASK: Participate in the student competition.

[fa-info-circle] To learn more about this section and its activities, read the TEACHING NOTES: Section 4.

[fa-glyphicon-plus] Activity types

These are the activity types in your e-classroom (in alphabetical order):

Assignment/Task

All links starting with "TASK:..." belong to this category. An assignment or task usually provides task instructions for students. In this course, we have also added most relevant materials and resources as links below the task instructions. In the settings to this activity type, a submission type (online text, a file etc.) can be selected and, then, individually graded by the teacher. However, in this course we have mostly disabled this feature as in most cases students are asked to contribute to a forum or database, or produce an offline outcome (e.g. a classroom presentation) in order to complete the assignment.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Choice

A choice activity is very simple – the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Database

The database activity module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Forum

The forum module is an activity where students and teachers can exchange ideas by posting comments. These comments can include text, images, videos, links, and files. Forums can be used for course administration, social exchange, topic discussion, brainstorming, etc.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Glossary

The glossary activity module allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary, or to collect and organize resources or information collaboratively. The entries can be searched or browsed. The auto-linking feature will highlight any word in the course which is located in the glossary.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Quiz

The Quiz activity module allows the design of quizzes consisting of a large variety of Question types, including multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. The quiz activity is used as part of the TASK: The Electoral System – Step by Step and in this case can be edited by your students. (See task instructions for further details.)

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this activity type.

  Resource/page

Web-page resources are simple pages with text and other media for the display of information. The teaching notes are examples of this feature.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this resource type.

  URL/Link

These are simple links on the internet to a website or online file. Usually, they lead to additional information for further research or to additional web-tools that are useful or necessary for an activity.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this resource type.

[fa-glyphicon-plus] Blocks

At the right side of your course overview, you can access a selection of boxes. If you or your students find them distracting, you can collapse them or have a minimized version of them docked to the left edge of your screen. Simply click the respective button in the top right corner of each box.

Navigation

Use this block to navigate through the different site pages (Site pages), your user profile (My profile), different course sections and activities (Current courses), and other courses in which you are enrolled as a user (My courses).

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this side block.

Administration

Use this block to administer your course. In fact, all the basic settings for your course have already been prepared and set – so only use this block if you need to make any further changes to your course page (for advanced users). Two useful settings in this block are:

- Course administration → Turn editing on: Lets you access this editing mode, e.g. to make certain assignments, resources, and links invisible.

- Switch role to... → Student: Lets you switch your user role to that of a students, i.e. you only see links and settings that your students can see. Thus, in this mode you do not see e.g. any invisible links such as the teaching notes.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this side block.

Activities

In this block, all available activity types for your course are displayed. Clicking on these activity types leads you to an overview list with all activities of this type in your course. This list also includes a basic summary of participation in these activities.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this side block.

Online users

A list of users currently online. Clicking on a user's name leads you to their profile page.

[fa-external-link] Click here for more documentation on this side block.