What is MyPoliSciLab?

MyPoliSciLab (MPSL) is a state-of-the-art, interactive and instructive online solution for introduction to American Government. Designed to be used as a supplement to a traditional lecture course, or completely administer an online course, MyPoliSciLab combines multimedia, tutorials, simulations, tests and quizzes to make teaching and learning fun!

 

MyPoliSciLab is published by one of the largest publishers in higher education, Pearson Education (London). MyPoliSciLab supplements seven American politics text books (O’connor, Edwards, Fiorina, Greenberg, Shea, Magelby, and Dye). Combined, these text books are used by more than 50% of political scientists teaching Introduction to American Politics. It is the most used online supplement in all Political Science, combining multimedia content, tutorials, simulations, quizzes and more. MyPoliSciLab has been adopted by more than 1,000 political science faculty members across the country with over 150,000 students using the supplement each year.

 

Origins

In 2002, the political science department at Cerritos College (a large, urban, ethnically diverse community college in Southern California) came together out of concern for student success in political science courses.  The consensus of the department was that there was a need to add multimedia to the pedagogy. The department originally approached this problem as individuals.  Emerging literature, college staff development programs, and intuition suggested to department faculty that the traditional “chalk and talk” approach was not working and that the department needed to broaden and diversify the pedagogy. One member of the department started focusing on study supplements, including workbooks, summaries, home work packets, and printed lecture outlines.  Another member of the department moved in the direction of class-based simulations, applied exercises, and collaborative learning. Another member of the department began to develop audio and web-based materials.

 

From these early attempts, the department realized two important conclusions. First, department faculty’s predictions were correct—students perform better when the “chalk and talk” environment is supplemented, but they also soon realized the increased workload of these approaches—developed and utilized individually—brought duplicated and unnecessary work to professional life. Given both conclusions, faculty in the department decided to approach the development of a departmental pedagogy—establish a pedagogy plan and corresponding resources—in a collaborative manner.

At the time, the college was encouraging and supporting an eBook initiative that encouraged faculty to develop multimedia materials. The political science faculty decided to participate in the initiative and set about the process of redeveloping materials that department faculty had already been using as individuals.

 

The first major project was the development of video-taped roundtable discussions. As a group, members of the department recorded hour-length videos on assorted topics and delivered the materials to students via CD ROM. As the project grew and as the department continued to develop multimedia-based materials, faculty in the department soon began dealing with technology challenges that very quickly outstripped the expertise and budget of the department and college. This effort led faculty in the department through a two-year process (2003-2005) of talking to textbook publishers.  Looking for a partner with a clear technology plan and platform, department faculty met with every major textbook publisher and a few small custom publishers in an attempt to find the ideal partner. Although meetings with most publishers were insightful, faculty struggled to find the right fit, where publishers would develop the technology platform and faculty would develop the content.   

 

The fortunes of department faculty turned around when they met with Pearson Longman Publishers (an imprint of Pearson Education Inc.).  Department meetings with Pearson Longman were profoundly different than meetings with other publishers. They understood technology, had a plan, and had much of their plan developed and moving forward. What they wanted was content. This led to the ideal partnership for the department, officially starting in 2005.  The partnership continues to date and is slated for long-term collaboration.  Through this partnership, faculty develop content, while Pearson Education Inc. provides and maintains the technology platform and infrastructure and faculty in the department collaborate on the development of technology solutions that sit in the platform and hold the published content. The result of this relationship and approach has been the ongoing development of MyPoliSciLab.